


The Dog, The Cat & The Two City Rats

by thesundancekid



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Friendship, London, New York City, Post Reichenbach
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-07-22
Updated: 2012-09-06
Packaged: 2017-11-10 12:30:21
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 4
Words: 22,110
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/466275
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thesundancekid/pseuds/thesundancekid
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Companionship comes in all shapes and sizes, but some fit better than others.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. The Dog

A year after Sherlock Holmes died, you could find him living at apartment 34 in a tall building at the intersection between Maiden Lane and Gold Street, downtown New York.

Of course, you couldn’t actually find him unless you already knew where you were looking. And you couldn’t possibly know where you were looking unless you knew what you were looking for, and if you knew what you were looking for, that would mean knowing that Sherlock Holmes was still alive. If you fulfilled all of these criteria, then you would be either Molly Hooper or Mycroft Holmes, and if you were either of these people, then Sherlock had no interest in being found by either of you anyway.

He had gone through all the other obvious, dull processes that creating a new identity entailed. He had changed his name. He adopted a grating but nevertheless frighteningly accurate Brooklyn-esque accent for moments in which it was necessary to speak to people. He had created a backstory for himself; an intricate lie constructed mostly from half-truths from his real life combined with snippets of plotlines from television shows he had semi-watched with John on Sunday nights at Baker Street. That task had kept him amused for a while, and the kick of satisfaction he got out of telling his landlady the ridiculous and implausible story of his fictional past was almost comparable to the time he had solved a case for Lestrade in the time it took for the traffic light they were waiting at to turn green. But other than his landlady (a cold, uptight woman, clearly a failed actress with two (possibly three) divorces behind her and who wore cheap perfume to disguise her smoking habit (she was not a patch on Mrs Hudson)), there were not many people around to appreciate Sherlock’s imaginative and carefully fabricated past, which was something of a shame.

Still, despite what newspapers, official paperwork and Mycroft Holmes would tell you, and what the new accent, new haircut and new collarless coat would make you believe, Sherlock remained Sherlock in all important aspects. He still played his violin, he still performed experiments with human bodyparts in his small kitchen, he still went for days sometimes without sleeping, eating or speaking. The difference now was that there was nobody around to notice, nobody to remind him of his inescapable human bodily needs, nobody to care. Sherlock had been alone before, and he had never doubted that he would be alone again, but for a brief period inbetween, there had been John Watson, and that was a very hard period to erase from the hard drive. Companionship, far from being irritating and hindering to Sherlock’s genius and focus, had been marvellous. Revelatory. Companionship had been the greatest insight into the lives of normal people that Sherlock could have ever wanted.

 It was actually rather addictive, having an audience. The first night Sherlock stayed in apartment 34 in the building at the intersection of Maiden Lane and Gold Street, he had been struck by a brilliant idea about the hormone production in tree-frogs, and when he realised there was nobody around to share this revelation with, he was stunned for a moment. He set his mind to deducing the previous residents of his apartment, but when he had already concluded that the list went: ballet dancer -> construction worker -> single mother -> twenty-something aspiring musician -> the world’s only consulting detective within 4.8 seconds, Sherlock realised he was going to go very insane, very fast without companionship. At least, more insane than he already was.

So, in what could only be described as an uncharacteristic moment of startling sensibility and self-awareness, on his second day in New York, Sherlock bought a dog. An honest-to-God dog; 15lbs of canine bounciness and slobber (Sherlock had not anticipated the slobber). The conversation with the pet store owner had been excellent purely for its entertainment value, if nothing else (because Sherlock had been allowed to be Sherlock for so long with John, he was a little out of practice at being normal, and the results were alarming and amusing):

Man: Hi there sir, can I help you?

Sherlock: Yes, hello, I’d like to buy a dog.

Man: A dog?

Sherlock: Yes, a dog. That’s what you sell, isn’t it? Pets? Animals? Dogs? In fact, I _know_ you sell dogs because there are four distinct hairs on your Walmart polyester blend trousers that are evidently canine, could be either Terrier or Beagle, but I’m going to go with Terrier, more out of hope than anything else because I’d rather not have a Beagle, their eyes make them look permanently self-pitying and I can’t _bear_ self-pity, terriers have a much more resilient look about them, probably because they were generally bred for their sturdiness and speed rather than for their appearances, which is generally not something that I pay much attention to anyway.

There was an agonisingly long silence.

Sherlock: I mean, yes. I would like a dog.

Sherlock had walked out of the store with a small, sturdy, perfectly resilient-looking border terrier that the man told him was called ‘Bingo’ but that was certainly not going to be called that by Sherlock or by anyone in Sherlock’s presence. Perhaps inevitably, the name the dog eventually began to respond to was ‘Watson’, and if there was anything odd or revealing about that, Sherlock chose to ignore it. But the name was never important, anyway. It was the companionship, the partnership, the two-for-one package that Sherlock had gotten comfortable in. When you asked for Sherlock, you got Sherlock-and-Watson, and that, he felt, was as it should be. Naturally it was going to be difficult for him to return to solitude so abruptly. Naturally he would need someone (or something) to ease him back into it. Sherlock understood this as a comprehensible human need, and certainly NOT as a weakness or as ‘sentiment’.

Besides, the dog was extremely useful. When Sherlock spilled milk or bolognese sauce on the floor and neither John nor Mrs Hudson was there to insist on him cleaning it up, Watson (the canine version) was there on cue, licking the floor spotless again. When Sherlock had shut himself up in the apartment for longer than should be healthy, Watson would start howling and whining until Sherlock was forced to take him out for a walk just to get some peace and quiet (they went to Central Park, which was not Hyde Park, nor was it Regent’s Park, but it had to suffice). Watson sat obediently still and listened attentively when Sherlock needed to run a theory past someone, with his tongue out and his tail wagging which Sherlock took as a sign of approval, and Watson was the warm, fidgety weight on the sofa next to him as he sat and watched television in the evenings (a mindless habit which John had trained him into, and Sherlock was trying to train himself out of). The dog followed Sherlock everywhere he went, clearly thought he was the best human of all the humans he had known and provided him with a very demanding combination of distraction, warmth, and company. Yes, Watson filled the role that Dr. John Watson had performed before him, and that Sherlock’s skull had performed before Dr. John Watson. Companionship came in all shapes and sizes.

The dog also cemented Sherlock into his new life. Which, on prolonged reflection (an activity which Sherlock had plenty of time for), was not so very different from his old life. During the day, he experimented and contemplated and read textbooks and dictionaries and streetmaps. He stayed very still, curling up into a ball or sitting cross-legged or lying completely flat on his back on the sofa (which he had tried to place in the same position adjacent to the window that it had been in Baker Street but the angle of the wall was just wrong, wrong, _wrong_ and it didn’t feel the same at all), and moving only when necessity demanded it, such as to make the occasional cup of tea (canine Watson sadly could not replace John in this respect) or walk the stupid, needy, slobbery dog.  But other than that, Sherlock lay still, and (sometimes) Watson lay still next to him.

But at night… oh, at night they came _alive._

New York at night, Sherlock was pleased to discover was not dissimilar to London; flickering, humming, positively _throbbing_ with life and happenings and disappearances and murders. And although he was not quite as well-acquainted with the NYPD as he had been with Scotland Yard (he had yet to even meet a single one of them), he was finding ways to be of silent, ghostly assistance, largely through the use of the police radio he had deftly stolen from a police car stopped at a traffic light whilst the uniformed man inside was buckling his seatbelt. Sherlock would lie in the apartment and listen to the radio until something vaguely interesting seemed to be happening, and then he would put his coat on and venture out into the cold darkness, chasing and deducing and calculating faster and better than the police ever could. Most of the time, the NYPD barely knew what was happening before they came across whoever or whatever they were looking for, sitting stunned, handcuffed and practically _giftwrapped_ on the steps of their headquarters, spouting stories about a tall man with ice blue eyes and a border terrier with a nose for crime scenes.

Because of course the dog accompanied Sherlock on these adventures. Like it or not, Sherlock’s enjoyment of working on cases had come to depend upon an endlessly loyal, endlessly excitable wingman muttering ‘brilliant!’ and ‘that’s amazing… just amazing’ at his lightning deductions. The real John Watson had used to proclaim these statements out loud when they first met, but a combination of getting sick of the sound of his own voice and a reluctance to give Sherlock the satisfaction of knowing he had impressed him once again had beaten him into silence. That was a shame, but it didn’t really matter, because Sherlock could still hear the muttering exclamations of awe inside John’s head all the time. He could hear them so loud and so clear, like a police siren at dawn. Of course, he couldn’t anymore, because John was somewhere 3464 miles away and was convinced that Sherlock was dead, and even Sherlock’s knack for telepathy couldn’t overcome obstacles like that. So Sherlock superimposed them onto the new Watson, convinced himself that he could hear the silent exclamations of amazement and approval echoing around his small-but-fiesty friend’s shaggy head and it was almost _almost_ as good as the real thing.

As time wore on, Sherlock began to wonder why he had ever thought it a good idea to walk the streets without a dog by his side. Watson was excellent, he barked at people who got in their way, and bit people who _really_ got in their way, and Sherlock wondered if he had accidentally managed to somehow train the stupid dog to behave like this, or if he just instinctively knew his place, knew his role and his purpose in this game, this dance of madmen. He knew how to fall into step next to Sherlock and how to keep up, what to do, how to cope.

Had Sherlock ever taught John how to keep up, what to do, how to cope? No, he supposed not. Medical school, the army and John’s own nightmares had done that for him. Sherlock had just been the lucky recipient of the end product; a hardened, fearless soldier with terrifyingly good aim and an unfathomable capacity for kindness. Sherlock had not taught John how to cope. The obvious logical deduction from this was that John could cope without Sherlock. This was the reasoning Sherlock used to justify his abandonment of his friend. The phone call, the faked suicide, the newspaper headlines… it had all been so overdramatic, so untidy, such a disgustingly rude way to say goodbye to someone as straightforward and pleasant as John… but never mind, never mind, John would cope. John would Keep Calm and Carry On in that quintessentially British way of his, and he would cope.

A pointless smile would tug at Sherlock’s lips whenever he thought of John coping, when he pictured him exhaling slowly, squaring his shoulders and soldiering on. This was unfair; it shouldn’t make him smile, because he knew John would be sad, and John’s sadness shouldn’t result in Sherlock smiling. But Sherlock couldn’t be sad, couldn’t bring himself to be sad, because at this very moment Dr John H Watson was still walking the face of the earth in all his rumpled glory because of what Sherlock had done. Sherlock was pleased, because that was a ‘good thing’. Even if it had meant considerable expense for Mycroft and even more considerable inconvenience to Sherlock’s own life, John had lived because Sherlock had ‘died’, and if that wasn’t cause for smiling, then Sherlock didn’t know what was.

It was also much better this way, Sherlock discovered whilst on one of his periods of prolonged reflection. It was much better that Sherlock had left John in such spectacular, destructive style before John had found a much quieter and more sensible way to leave him, because it gave a nice finality to the whole ordeal. John would never go looking for Sherlock again because he thought he could not be found, and Sherlock could not go back to John because he knew John would never look at him the same way again, and if John couldn’t look at Sherlock like he used to then Sherlock didn’t want to be looked at by him at all.

(There was also the obvious fact that if John had left Sherlock, Sherlock probably would have died anyway. Really died, this time. Not by throwing himself off a building, too much chance involved in that and certainly not by a bullet through the brain Moriarty-style, because honestly, how painfully _unoriginal_. Sherlock’s provisional plan was drugs, he knew of some spectacularly interesting and effective ones that would do the job just fine… but anyway, the point was that if John had left Sherlock, he would have ended up being the cause of Sherlock’s death rather than the mourner of it. And then he would have felt guilty, bless him. He wouldn’t understand that Sherlock was glad to be free of it all, and Sherlock wouldn’t be around to explain it, and small, sturdy little John would have felt so guilty, and Sherlock had learned somewhere that guilt was a much more damaging emotion than sadness, and it seemed to Sherlock that to damage John even more after all that just wouldn’t be fair.)

Yes, it all made perfect, obvious sense to Sherlock. Which is why it had been confusing and irritating back when he had asked Molly and Mycroft to help him with his plan, and their first question had not been ‘why is Moriarty doing this?’ or ‘but Sherlock, what will London do without you?!’ but ‘what about John?’

What? Sherlock had wanted to ask. _What_ about John? It wasn’t as if John hadn’t seen death before, after all, he was a doctor; he had seen it, breathed it, lived it for almost all his life. People were always dying, as Moriarty had so eloquently pointed out; it’s what they DO. People died, and other people stayed alive.

The excellent thing about Sherlock’s plan was that this way, they _both_ got to stay alive, and as an added bonus, Sherlock got to fulfil every person’s morbid fantasy of attending his own funeral (he was only mildly disappointed by the sparse turnout, and definitely not surprised). This way, Sherlock played dead forever, and those snipers would never get near John or Lestrade or Mrs Hudson, and they would honestly all lead much simpler, happier lives without him anyway. This way, Sherlock died a disgrace, and nobody would ever be interested in him or his story again, and it was far easier to work without people asking questions and putting cameras in his face. Far better to be another anonymous face in a big city, far better to be alone with his mind palace, far better to be an isolated sociopath in an apartment with a mongrel dog rather than having people around who… _cared_ about him. People who cared about him had always caused Sherlock vague twinges of anxiety. Why did they care? Why should they care? Was he supposed to care? Cutting them loose let him breathe a sigh of release. Nobody cared now, they all thought he was either a criminal or a fraud or a coward and, most importantly, dead, and Sherlock didn’t care either.

To revise that final statement, it might not have been entirely accurate. Sherlock might have cared a little. Sometimes he thought back to his funeral, which he had observed from behind a tree (the oldest of techniques, if anyone, _anyone,_ had even bothered to observe _in the slightest_ they could have spotted him), and considered what he had seen, and how he ought to feel about it. He was fairly sure he ought to feel sorry for Mrs Hudson, who was a lovely old lady and who shouldn’t be sobbing so inconsolably into a handkerchief over the brusque, disruptive, untidy man who had rented a flat from her, but he didn’t feel anything. He also supposed the sight of Lestrade’s haggard expression and hunched shoulders should have sparked some kind of sympathetic emotional reaction within him, but it didn’t. He also knew that watching John tight-jawed in the throes of such obvious denial and disbelief should have made him feel guilty, or impressed at his friend’s loyalty, or fond of him, or _anything_ other than what he did feel, which was very, very annoyed. It was annoying that John couldn’t just let him _go,_ like everybody else. It was annoying that John was so set on putting Sherlock on this ridiculous, uncomfortable pedestal. It was annoying that he somehow made Sherlock _want_ to be the person John thought he was. Sherlock had scowled at John from behind the tree.

_Come on now, John. Don’t be stupid, don’t be difficult. Don’t be too loyal for your own good. Accept it, believe it. I’m dead. I’m dead and gone._

And then there had been John’s little speech to the gravestone once everyone else had gone. And in regards to that, Sherlock had absolutely no idea whatsoever how he was supposed to feel.

So Sherlock did care a bit about John, just because he was standing in the way of Sherlock’s perfect plan, the plan where everybody forgot about him and carried on with their colourful, interactive human lives in which his tall, dark presence only featured in stories told to the grandchildren one day in the future (or the present, in Mrs Hudson’s case). Sherlock wanted to melt away to begin again, to dissolve into memory, to take the latter of Hamlet’s two propositions and not to be. But John, John the fighter, John the friend, was clinging on tightly to him, and making this process unnecessarily hard.

Which is why Sherlock could not remain in London very long after he was declared officially dead. Not because he would be recognised (he was far, far, _far_ too clever for that) but because remaining in London invariably meant remaining as close to John as he could possibly be without being seen (which was ridiculously close, John could be so amazingly _oblivious_ sometimes). And being close to John often seemed to bring with it an urge to speak to John, to touch John, to co-exist with John, to let John know that Sherlock was still alive and that he had beaten Moriarty at his own game, and that he, Sherlock Holmes, was _brilliant_ , more brilliant than even John could ever have imagined, and wasn’t it a great day, and was he hungry? Should they go to Angelo’s? Did he have enough biscuits in the cupboard?

Obviously this couldn’t happen. It would ruin everything.

So Sherlock went cold turkey on his addictions to London and to John Watson, and moved across an ocean from them. If one thought about it that way, analogised London/John with cigarettes (which was the way Sherlock liked to think about it), then New York and the dog were nicotine patches. Fulfilling the role, satiating the need, quelling the desire… but not the same. Never, never, _never_ quite the same.

And so, a year after Sherlock Holmes died, that is where you would find him. Lying on the sofa in a small but serviceable apartment in downtown New York, doing what he had always done; solving crimes and dealing with addictions.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hi!  
> First ever story, don't really know what I'm doing, pretty much just trying to stay sane during hiatus.  
> Wish me luck.  
> xx


	2. The Cat

A year after Sherlock Holmes died, you could find John Watson living in a slightly worse-for-wear one bedroom house in Dalkeith Grove, useful because of its proximity to Edgware Community Hospital and because of its very reasonable rent.

The reasonable rent was crucial because, soon after The Incident, it became clear to John that he could not afford to remain in London without a flatmate, but also that there was no conceivable set of circumstances that existed in the world in which he could ever share a flat with anybody else for as long as he lived. Therefore a relocation to a modest suburb just outside of London became the only option. He missed the city ( _God_ how he missed it), but the city was too inextricably tangled up with crime scenes and taxi rides and painful things, and John knew that if he spent too much time there, he would go very insane, very fast.

Besides, life at 37 Dalkeith Grove was not bad, not bad at all. He was on first name terms with his postman, he finally had a kitchen that was free from bacteria-filled petri-dishes and severed limbs, and he even went out to the pub sometimes with some of his colleagues after his shift. Girlfriends had continued to come and go; one of them had even turned into a fiancée and had moved in for a while, bringing an antisocial grey cat with her. Two months later, she had got to know John better, decided she would rather not know any more, had ceased to be his fiancée, moved out, and left the antisocial grey cat behind her.

And, in a moment of what could only be described as a moment of characteristically charitable madness, John decided not to drop it off at a rescue shelter or give it to one of his lonely elderly neighbours, but to keep it. For some sodding reason, he had felt overcome by a sense of oneness with this cat; both of them left behind so abruptly and unceremoniously by people who had been devastatingly important to them (for the cat, Mary (John’s ex) and for John… well, not Mary), both of them hating each other, hating their situation, hating everything (except for bacon, which they both happened to love). It was an exercise in masochism, John eventually realised, as much as anything else. The cat was a physical symbol of everyone who had ever left him, and all the reasons why he wasn’t good enough to make them stay, and so John would keep the cat around all the time, to be constantly reminded. The sort of thing Sherlock might have done, he imagined.

So now, John supposed, he owned a cat. Or rather, to be more accurate, the bloody cat owned him. There was no part of this relationship in which John was the master. The cat came and went when it felt like it, ignored John when he tried to pet it, and then insisted on leaping up onto his desk and planting himself smack bang in the middle of his paperwork whenever he tried to get anything done. There had been times when John had attempted to get into his own bed, only to find the cat had got there first, and when it hissed at him, he sighed, nodded (as if this was only to be expected), and went downstairs to sleep on the sofa. Masochism indeed.

Ironically (or rather, predictably), John still loved the cat, even when the cat displayed no outward signs of returning the sentiment. In fact, he probably loved the horrible thing precisely _because_ it showed no outward signs of returning the sentiment. It was aloof and disinterested and unimpressed by anything anybody did for it; independent, mysterious, an enigma… a torturously pleasing kind of déjà vu for John, the one-time sidekick to the greatest enigma of all. Cats in general tend to have a superiority complex, but John had to admit, this cat in particular made absolutely certain that John knew that it was infinitely faster, smarter and better in every way than him, and this feeling of inadequacy in the face of greatness was so familiar to him that it became strangely comforting. John assumed the role once again of carer/facilitator/housekeeper/someone to pay the bills and buy the milk, and it was a smooth transition. Like breathing. ( _Except_ _breathing’s boring_.)

 Sometimes the cat would come home smelling of bonfires or streaked in sticky blank paint that looked like tar, and John would wash it and take care of it and ponder the nature of the adventures that this grey whisper of sleekness found in the residential streets of Edgware. Most of the time he concluded that he was better off not knowing, that his adventure days were long behind him, that it was time to settle down and live a life that was appropriate for a middle-aged army doctor with a bad leg (yes, the psychosomatic limp was back, and no, John didn’t need an expensive Harley Street therapist to tell him why, thank you very much. He might not be the world’s only consulting detective, but he reckoned he could deduce _that_ one for himself.)

But sometimes John’s sensibility wavered, and flashbacks of whirling blue police lights and pink suitcases and the black rippling Thames hit him like a train, winding him so that he had to lean back against the living room wall as the cat struggled out of his arms and stalked off somewhere else unknown. John _wanted_ it; the adrenaline, the danger, the game, the dance of madmen… he wanted life and reality and common decency to be twisted upside down with every corner they turned, he wanted to go back to the city with the man who _was_ the city. It was the only possible way of _living_ and not just simply staying alive.

But his fellow madman was gone. Irrevocably gone, and the entire exercise was pointless and empty without him. And anyway, he could never just pack up and leave now. Someone had to stick around to feed the cat.

(John knew this excuse didn’t entirely hold. The truth was that he had been handed plenty of opportunities for adventure before the cat had entered his life; Lestrade had come to visit him only a few days after he moved:

“But you’ll be coming back to London fairly often, won’t you? I mean… the Yard will be needing you.”

“Needing me?” said John, who at this point was still trying his absolute hardest to find words inside his head and somehow transfer them into his mouth and out to the world. “What can I do for the Yard?”

Lestrade looked confused; the classic confused face that Sherlock would take the piss out of, if he had been there ( _Is it all a bit much for you, Lestrade? Is it getting a bit crowded in that tiny little brain of yours? Would you like to sit down for a moment?)._

“Well you’re the closest thing we’ve got, aren’t you? To… him, I mean. Obviously we’re not expecting you to be available 24/7 like he was. Just every now and then… only when we really need you… you have all the experience necessary…”

Oh yes, John understood. He had suspected people might get hold of the misguided notion that, because John had spent more time with Sherlock than most; he was better equipped to understand him. Because he had followed him to crime scenes and seen him in action, he would be able to emulate the techniques Sherlock employed, and reproduce the same results. Because he had lived with him, known what could be referred to as the ‘real’ Sherlock, he should have a good idea of what made Sherlock so bloody perceptive and quick and brilliant. John supposed people thought that Sherlock had passed his genius onto John, handing over the deeds to the mind palace and the rights to the endless wealth of memories and information that were stored there like a clause in his will ( _I hereby entrust everything I ever knew to Dr John Hamish Watson, to use at his own discretion…_ ). The idea would have been laughable, if it hadn’t made John want to cry.

“So, will you come?”

He realised he hadn’t given Lestrade an answer.

“Oh. That’s very… it’s flattering, I think. But I’m not the closest thing to him, far from it. I’m nothing like him at all, I can’t do anything he can do, I can’t see things the way he can… I was only ever there to make him look taller by contrast, remember?” John heard himself talking about Sherlock in the present tense and wanted to kick himself for being so psychologically predictable, but could do nothing to prevent it. “No… he is extraordinary, and I am very, very ordinary indeed.”

Lestrade’s eyebrows twisted into the expression that had haunted John for weeks now: _concern_. Oh yes, people were so _concerned_ about John now, concerned about him living alone, concerned about him going back to work so soon, concerned about the insomnia medication he was taking. All John wanted to know was where this _concern_ had been when Richard Brook was smearing Sherlock’s name and people were mindlessly lapping it all up and systematically destroying Sherlock from the inside-out and he had ended up throwing himself off the roof of a goddamn _building_. Where had the _concern_ been then?

“John... I’m just really _concerned_ about you, mate. I don’t want you isolating yourself from people, it’s not healthy.” Lestrade insisted gently.

John resisted the urge to let out a biting remark about how, as a doctor, he was perfectly aware of what was and wasn’t _healthy_. He knew that isolating himself from people wasn’t healthy. But he had also known that it wasn’t healthy to chase a taxi halfway around London until your lungs burned dry and rasping, or to stay awake for days on end tracking a Chinese smuggling gang and dodging bullets, or to allow a slightly insane man to perform frankly unhygienic experiments involving all kinds of chemicals and body parts in his own kitchen. None of this had been healthy by a doctor’s (or indeed anyone’s) standards, but it hadn’t stopped him from letting it happen. Clearly health had not been a priority of John Watson’s for quite a while now, come to think of it.

Lestrade came back to visit another two or three times, bringing with him news about Sally Donovan’s engagement, about a particularly gruesome double murder in Golders Green, about the new brand of coffee they were using at the Yard… life was carrying on apace in London, apparently. His final visit took place four days after John had adopted the cat; it had clawed its way up Lestrade’s leg, leapt onto his shoulder and taken three very deliberate swipes at his left cheek, drawing beads of dark blood that dripped down onto his starched policeman’s collar. John had watched in tired resignation, and Lestrade had never returned since.)

John really did try not to think about Sherlock. He occupied himself with all kinds of little projects; fixing a bicycle for the ten-year-old boy who lived next-door, re-wallpapering the bathroom in a gender-neutral creamy grey as opposed to the cloying candy pink, attempting to read his way through the Guardian newspaper’s list of Top 100 Greatest Novels of All Time. And then there was work; he volunteered for extra shifts, unpaid overtime, assisting GPs and surgeons… he was everybody’s favourite guy at Edgware Community Hospital because, despite his not inconsiderate experience and qualifications, he was willing to perform any task offered to him, no matter how menial, dirty or dull. People often mistakenly put this down to Dr Watson’s ‘genuine compassion’ and his ‘doctor’s sense of duty’, but the truth was, he was just wasting time. Occupying his mind with pointless things, so there was no space left for anything else. Cluttering up his hard drive with bone fractures and asthma reviews and cases of mild bronchitis; hoping and praying that this mind-numbing tedium would be just exhausting enough to send him to sleep at night without a struggle. Because the struggle came when he let the memories and regrets and questions and endless THOUGHTS flood his brain (W _hen he said that, what did he mean? Could I have known then, should I have stopped it? Where was I when that was happening? If I had said something different in that moment, would he have stayed? If I had told him how much he bloody meant to me, would he have done it? And if he had, would that have made it better… or worse? Was it my fault? Was it inevitable? Was any of it ever even real?)_

Sleep had not been an easy thing for a long time. The post traumatic stress disorder following Afghanistan had been phenomenally awful. John had woken up terrified, sweating and panting with invisible bloodstains all over him and the endless crack of silent gunshots in his ears for months. Every time he drifted off into sleep, his subconscious would hurl him right back into that brutal desert, into the midst of a battle or an air raid or a bombing, and the noise and the fear and the pain of it all was so unbearable that John would rather not have slept at all.

But whatever John was experiencing now ( _post traumatic Sherlock disorder,_ he supposed) was something else entirely. At least Afghanistan had been a million miles away, alien and isolated. At least it had been an experience he could categorize and separate from the rest of his life, and, if he tried hard enough, one that he could go a reasonable length of time without thinking about. But this was not like that at all. The lines between Real Life and Life With Sherlock were so blurred and merged that John could not help but think about it. _Constantly_. Tea reminded him of it. Police sirens reminded him of it. Iphone cases reminded him of it. Dogs, the colour pink, telephone booths, swimming pools, homeless people… how could John ever escape it when it surrounded him and confronted him at every turn? Before, sleep was so torturous that John would rather have avoided it altogether. Now being awake was the torturous part; sleep was the only escape.

It still wasn’t easy, though. Nightmares were bread and butter to the doctor now, and whilst the days were monotonous and routine, his dreams found new and horrific ways to frighten and terrorize him every night. Always something different and darker and more awful.

Occasionally (and here, this means _very_ occasionally) during these bad nights, John would be awake and suddenly feel an abrupt movement and a small weight would land on the other side of the bed with an insistent ‘ _mrraow_ ’. When this happened, he would hold his breath and lie very still indeed, and sometimes the cat would silently pick its way across the duvet cover and curl itself into a ball next to John’s neck, a compact heat source of softness that made small little purring noises as it breathed in and out. When this happened, John was so amazed and confused and gratified that he could no longer think straight about anything at all, and quickly fell into a gentle sleep as if it was the easiest thing in the world.

When John woke up the next morning, the cat was always gone. And inevitably, later that same day, it would scratch John’s ankle, claw his good tie to shreds, and yowl incessantly to be fed, leaving him with no evidence of  its fleeting moment of affection except for the benefits of the full night’s sleep it seemed to give him. John accepted this quirk in the accepting way that only people who have dealt with difficult flatmates before can do, and he was silently grateful for it.

So, how predictable. A year after Sherlock Holmes died, you would find John Watson trying to save lives, trying to save money, and trying to get a good night’s sleep, all whilst trying to puzzle out his infuriating and yet somehow endearing flatmate. Just as he always had done.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello again!  
> Sorry for a delay in posting, a two week holiday in Vietnam interrupted procedures slightly.  
> Business as usual from now on.  
> Hope you like it :)


	3. The Underground Mice

One year and seven months after Sherlock Holmes died, you could find him sitting in a small café in the Meatpacking district of New York, drinking a coffee with three sachets of sugar in it. It wasn’t particularly good coffee, and it wasn’t a particularly good café, but on this particular Sunday afternoon it was full full full of people, and Sherlock felt like feeling alone in a crowd. It was a nice feeling, sometimes, to be one anonymous person amongst many. It allowed you to wallow in self-pity or misanthropy or exhaustion or general loathing or whatever you needed to wallow in without having any negative impact on people who actually mattered. In Baker Street, Sherlock couldn’t even have one good sulk without John or Mrs Hudson or Mycroft getting worried and fidgety and asking lots of questions, and even though sometimes getting them to pay attention to him was the _point_ of the sulk in the first place, he could tell that they didn’t like it. It made them sad. Sherlock was always making them sad. But here, in this small café in the Meatpacking district of New York, he could brood as fiercely as he liked, and not one person would care. It was refreshing, really.

“Oh, sir, you’re not really supposed to have your dog in here…”  

Sherlock slowly flicked his gaze upwards to give the waitress his absolute best withering snarl of a glare which clearly read ‘ _if you don’t let me have my dog in here, I will tell him to tear you into small pieces, some of which he will eat now, and some of which we’ll take home in a bag and put in the freezer to eat another time’._ This kind of glare used to work instantly on the meek and mild British, but it rarely seemed to even register with the Americans. This particular waitress just carried on smiling her warm, friendly, saccharine smile at Sherlock, and waited for him to respond.

Sherlock sighed. He hated it when his death stares bounced off happy people like water off a duck’s back. Fortunately, however, this kind of thing had happened before, and Sherlock was pre-prepared

“He’s my guide dog. I’m blind.” He said, in as fragile a tone of voice as he could muster, producing an identity card from his pocket that said that his name was Peter Trent and he was 32 years old and he was a legally registered medically blind resident of New York City. (Don’t even ask how he acquired that.)

“Oh,” Her eyes widened as she scanned the card “I’m so sorry, Mr Trent, that was my mistake. Please enjoy your beverage.”

She smiled extra hard at him before she walked away, which made no sense to Sherlock because now that she believed him to be blind, why should she bother smiling at all? Americans were really very strange.

He moved his hand down to absent-mindedly scratch the dog’s head as he stared at all the people in this café. He only had to look at them to see their life stories laid out in front of his eyes like a map… the girl sitting in the corner eating a croissant: a secretary, sleeping with her boss, nervous of her colleagues finding out and judging her for it. The man making the coffees behind the bar: gay, trying to pluck up the courage to come out to his parents this week, also studying to be an interior designer. The lady who just walked in: recently married, albeit unhappily, went through a hippy phase in her 20s but now feels much too disillusioned with the world to engage in politics. They were all so _obvious_ , it both fascinated and sickened him. Sherlock simply didn’t understand why people bothered having conversations with each other and asking questions like ‘how are you’ and getting to know each other when it was all already so _obvious_. Words were so superfluous.

They also got in the way _constantly._ Sherlock had tried and tried to communicate things like normal people did, but words… they ruined everything. He wasn’t any good at them, and they always came out twisted and tangled, and people (mostly John) would take them the wrong way and get offended and everything was ruined. Sherlock remembered he had tried to explain this feeling to John once, and John had said Sherlock was like a character in a poem he had once read in secondary school, something about _daring to eat a peach_ and _braceleted arms_ , and when Sherlock had pressed him out of insistent curiosity, John had grown embarrassed and would reveal no more than the author’s name, _T.S. Eliot._ When Sherlock found the poem he had been talking about, he did not know whether to feel understood or offended or grateful or confused or angry or sad or loved or in love. _That is not it at all, that is not what I meant at all._

That’s why the dog was useful, because words weren’t a factor in their relationship. It was very straightforward and one-dimensional. Very few _feelings_ involved. Much better.

The beginnings of a melody floated into Sherlock’s ear, and he vaguely registered a scruffy-looking musician standing on a small stage in the corner of the café tuning a guitar. He rolled his eyes. He hated the kind of cafes that featured musicians. If he wanted to hear music, he would go to a concert, not to a café. A cafe was where he went when he wanted to observe and eavesdrop on people around him, and it was much harder to overhear when there was music playing in the background. For example, the man in the suit sitting two tables over from him was _just_ about to finally tell the ex-classmate he was on the phone with what he really thought of him (and Sherlock had been waiting for this moment since the man first walked in), when the insufferable musician stepped up to his microphone and started introducing himself to the crowd, thereby blocking out all other noise. Sherlock seethed. Now he would never ever know what the man was going to say. _Never._

John didn’t like music much either, Sherlock had noticed. He liked Sherlock’s violin, and he liked Christmas carols a lot more than he would ever admit, but he had never enjoyed the kind of music people played in cafes or that sophisticated hosts put on at dinner parties. _Background music_ , people called it. Sherlock hated that idea, the idea that people always needed some sort of distraction or entertainment in the _background._ As if what was going on inside their heads wasn’t ever enough for them. As if quietness was a gaping hole in life that needed to be filled rather than precious commodity to be treasured and enjoyed. Sherlock and John had never gotten around to hosting a dinner party, and now Sherlock supposed they never would, which was a shame. Even though he knew he would have been bored and irritated within minutes, and would have hated the whole experience, they still should have had the chance to do it at least once.

But then again, dinner parties were something that couples did, and Sherlock and John were not a couple. Just a partnership. There was a world of difference (apparently). But _the point was_ , if they ever had hosted a dinner party, they would not have had any background music at all. John would have been drawing up a detailed plan for what food they would buy and who they would seat next to each other at the table and how much it would all cost, and he would have looked up tentatively at Sherlock with his eyebrows raised and asked ‘music?’ in such a _military_ tone of voice, calm but firm, and with no hint of bias towards either answer. And Sherlock would have made a disgusted face and not even bothered to respond, and John would have smiled to himself and drawn a cross on his notepad and been secretly relieved. And they would have danced around each other like that forever, and never been bored or irritated.

Sherlock began to imagine John sitting opposite him at the table now, but stopped abruptly when he felt the strange and familiar ache at the core of his chest. This happened frequently, and for a long time it had mystified Sherlock, but after prolonged periods of observation and deduction, he had cracked it. He could think of John and Baker Street and running around London at night together without the ache because those were memories; they had happened and they were real and Sherlock would always have them. No, the ache began when Sherlock tried to imagine and envisage John as part of his new life, here in New York, because it was impossible and false and wrong. For as long as Sherlock lived, the image of John sitting opposite him at this particular table in this particular café would never be anything other than a fantasy. Sherlock let himself indulge in memories from time to time, but to let himself indulge in fantasies would be to enter excruciatingly dangerous territory, and his own body seemed to have a visceral physical reaction against it; a mechanism of self-defence and self-preservation. Interesting. The precise chemical and biological cause of the ache, Sherlock had not yet determined, but experiments and tests were in proceedings. He would know soon enough. And then he would have to find something else to discover. Endless. Pointless. Exhausting.

John. Why couldn’t he imagine John here? Surely it was simply a case of mind over matter, and Sherlock’s mind was phenomenally powerful. If he chose to imagine something, surely it should be able to appear real to him? Surely it shouldn’t gnaw at his chest and thrash against the walls of his heart like it did? Sherlock thought he might die from it sometimes. Which would be ironic, all things considered, because the cause of his death would have been his own death. How fantastically _twisted._

Sherlock drank the last cold mouthful of his coffee.

_Lie here until your world stops spinning around_

_Lie near until the birds start singing out_

_Come, show me what it is to be warm,_

_Be my shelter, and I’ll be your storm_

Sherlock tried to shake the beautiful, insidious, devastating music out of his head, to tune it out somehow, to remain unaffected, always. On more than one occasion Sherlock had claimed to have no heart, no feelings, nothing, but everyone who knew anything meaningful about him knew that wasn’t entirely true. He might have been somewhat emotionally stunted, but there were certain emotional aspects of the human condition that even he was not devoid of. Recognising the inescapable power that music sometimes wielded over the human senses was one of them. After all, for what other purpose had he played that goddamn violin for all these years? It was to feel.

But Sherlock didn’t _want_ to feel right now. How rude of this music; to think that it could invade his mind and assault his guarded heart and rouse his emotions like this. How horrifically rude. Sherlock wouldn’t have it. He would distract himself. Think of something else, anything else. What was the most distracting thing he could think of? Easy. Obvious. Not even a question, really. _John._ John’s face below him, across the street, holding his phone to his ear, shaking his head in disbelief, his mouth in a thin line of stubbornness. ‘ _No. Sherlock, stop it now._ ’ From his skyward position on the roof, Sherlock had barely been able to see John clearly, but physical sight was for people who had no imagination. Sherlock didn’t need to see John’s face in reality to _see_ it in his mind, to know it more intimately than tobacco varieties or blood spatter patterns or anything in the world, to map it out like a crime scene, like a priceless work of art. His face; confusion, fear… no, don’t remember that. Why remember that?

Not good.

Remember something good. There was so much good.

 _Come, lie down until the four winds cease to blow._ They had been out in the rain in Hyde Park, running after a librarian on a serial killing spree, John was somewhere behind him, he didn’t really know. This woman was fast, faster than one would expect a librarian to be, but mental agility trumps the physical every time, so Sherlock had no doubt he would catch her. He was getting bored and wet and cold though, so he decided that it should be sooner, rather than later. He predicted that she would veer to the right, aiming for the anonymity and bustle of the streets rather than the wide open space of the park, and he changed his track to intercept her perfectly. He had not, however, predicted the large breadknife she brandished at him as he stepped into her path. _Would rather not have died by breadknife, wounds will make for such an unattractive corpse, oh well, no matter now, I suppose,_ was Sherlock’s final thought before he closed his eyes and waited for the coppery taste of death. But instead there was a soft thud, and then a louder one, and Sherlock opened his eyes to see the woman lying on the ground, face down in the wet mud the rain had created, with Dr John Hamish Watson sitting on her back in the process of handcuffing her. Sherlock wondered momentarily where he had got the handcuffs from. He also wondered where John had appeared from, sudden and fierce like that. Quite something, actually. He thought about it as he kicked the knife out of the woman’s hand into the bushes beside them.

 _Bloody hell_ John had said once he had caught his breath. Sherlock smiled. _Why are you smiling?_ John asked, with the look on his face that snagged somewhere between extreme irritation and genuine curiosity. _You were about two seconds away from being sliced into pieces._ Sherlock laughed, firstly because it was true, and secondly because it was so ridiculous that he should have been saved by this wonderful, determined little man who had just demonstrated a tackle that the English rugby team would have been proud of. Sherlock should have died, would have died, except for John, throwing himself in the way, making sure that didn’t happen. Possibly (probably) risking his own life in the process. Ridiculous. Hilarious. Sherlock laughed and laughed. John frowned a little; _Stop that, it’s deeply disturbing. I’m going to call Lestrade._ What Sherlock thought was: _alright, alright, call Lestrade and he will come and sort it out and then we will go home and you’ll sleep and I will stay awake and watch you and listen to the rain, and then you will wake up and make tea and we will start all over again._ What Sherlock said was: _I’m cold._ And he was cold, very cold, and in the end he had to lie on the sofa for several days after that because he was very ill, and he felt a bit pathetic and useless, but John sat with him and forcefed him soup and let him curl up against him as he drifted in and out of feverish sleep and made him feel like a King. _Come, show me what it is to be warm._

And the first time, the very first time they had laid eyes on each other in that laboratory, when Sherlock knew everything about John in the 3 second interval it took him to hand him his phone. So upright, such a sense of duty and such a lovely kind mouth, Sherlock really quite liked him straight away. But ‘liking’ was stupid and irrational and annoying and didn’t mean anything and often led to being let down, and so Sherlock had not let himself acknowledge the feeling until much much later, only when it became clear that the sentiment was mutual and therefore acceptable. But in retrospect, perhaps Sherlock could have and should have deduced that this man would end up meaning everything to him. A friend, _a friend_ ; in all his wildest cocaine-fulled fantasies of his youth, Sherlock could not have dreamed that he would ever have a friend. It was entirely beyond his field of experience. Beyond anything textbooks and experiments and savant genius could have allowed him to expect. All the same, perhaps he should have known it from…  John’s shoelaces? From the slight dark rings around his eyes? From the inexplicable feeling of _content_ that permeated Sherlock when John handed him the mobile with a perfunctory smile?

 _Be my shelter, and I’ll be your storm._ John, of course, did not know, had no way of knowing, never really knew what was happening at all until he was in far, far too deep to escape and having much too good a time to mind much about it. The madness and the danger was seductive in its way, Sherlock knew, but he was still taken mildly aback by John’s susceptibility to it. He _craved_ it, sometimes more than Sherlock did, although he was too bourgeois and normal and sane to let it show. _I have a case for us, serial killer, poisoning girls using their own perfume, brilliant!_ Sherlock would say, unrestrainedly enthusiastic, and John would look appropriately reproachful and say _Sherlock…_ but he would grab his coat and be out the door and right by Sherlock’s side in half a heartbeat anyway. And Sherlock had stopped even trying to bite back his satisfied smile when this happened.

So Sherlock Holmes had a secret craving for domesticity and contentness, and John Watson had one for depravity and danger. Who would have known?

_Be my shelter, and I’ll be your storm_

_And we’ll show the fire how to burn._

No, no, _no_ , Sherlock couldn’t stand it any longer. He sighed and stood up, reaching into his pockets and letting a few coins clatter onto the table. More than enough for the coffee, but what did it matter? Money was hardly of importance. His dog was beside him as he walked out of the small, smoky café and into the biting cold New York air outside, tightening his scarf around his neck. _Don’t do that thing. The thing with the collar and your cheekbones._ He couldn’t do that thing anymore, even if he wanted to. His beautiful Belstaff coat had disappeared somehow during his death display; maybe Molly had it, or the morgue, or even one of his homeless network. Sherlock didn’t know. Silly to be attached to a piece of clothing though, sentiment of the absolute worst and most dehabilitating kind, so Sherlock had instantly gone out and bought himself a new collarless coat which served the purpose of keeping him warm perfectly well, and he would not make a fuss about it.

He began to walk at his classic rapid pace, with long, striding, purposeful steps, and the dog padded and panted along beside him. Watson had never needed a leash. Sherlock sometimes saw people in the park walking their ridiculous dogs on leashes, yanking and being yanked and altogether looking very inelegant and foolish, and he suspected that if he had been a bit more in tune with his feelings, he would have felt sorry for them. He imagined how they must envy him, with his perfect, intelligent, intuitive canine companion, who never needed to be yanked around on a piece of expensive leather, but who followed Sherlock without question and without coercion. The very incarnation of man’s best friend. Sherlock _loved_ the dog (he could admit that without even a twinge of crippling awkwardness and fear and distaste for emotional declarations). He loved the dog for choosing to stick by his side, even when he forgot to feed him and sometimes shouted at him and dragged him into dangerous and frightening situations more frequently than he liked to contemplate. He also loved the dog because the dog loved him so unconditionally and unexpectedly and irrationally and openly. Sherlock found it much, much easier to admit he loved something when there was no chance of it leaving him or letting him down or not feeling quite the same way or misunderstanding him completely.

_(I remembered it._

John had rolled his eyes. _Sherlock, once again, I am a normal human being and I can’t hear the parts of the conversation that only happen inside your head. Start from the beginning._

Sherlock frowned a little, and tried again. With most people he would have sneered and given up, but John wasn’t most people, and John was worth patience. _Remember I said, three days ago, when we had just got back from Dartmoor that you reminded me of something and I couldn’t remember what it was?_

John looked up and to the right; where he looked when he was remembering. Eventually he nodded. _Oh yup, I remember that. Although I recall you being pretty delirious from lack of sleep at the time, so it was a bit mumbled and I didn’t--_

_Yes, well, I’ve remembered it now. It’s the mice. That time I went on the tube, which is never to be repeated, there were some little mice in the underground platforms. They were running alongside the tracks._

John’s had lowered his paper slowly, his eyes narrowed at Sherlock, as if he couldn’t quite work out if he was joking or not. How silly of him; since when did Sherlock ever waste breath on making jokes? He only ever said what was important. John must have known that by now.

_And I remind you of them?_

_Yes._ Hadn’t Sherlock made that clear? Why was John clearing his throat in that way that meant Sherlock had said something wrong? What social norms could Sherlock possibly have trampled on this time?

 _So I remind you of dirty, pathetic scavengers that everyone finds a bit disgusting and tries not to notice? Oh thanks for that, yeah… thanks a lot._ John was trying to be lightly sarcastic, but his tone was just a little too clipped, his shoulders just a little too tense. He was hurt.

And Sherlock was confused. _That was intended as a compliment,_ he had said, trying to explain and be patient and be good for John.

 _A compliment?_ John had barked out a laugh that made Sherlock want to curl up in a ball and claw himself to pieces. _In that case, please never compliment me again. Or anyone else, come to think of it. Please just keep it all inside your head, where it rightly belongs._

Sherlock considered telling John how wrong he was. Considered telling him that, even if other people thought of the mice as dirty and pathetic, to him they were not, telling him that actually he saw them as brave and resilient and maybe just a little recklessand altogether quite endearing. He considered saying that they had given him something to smile about on his otherwise utterly unpleasant ordeal on the tube, and he considered saying that John did the same during the otherwise vaguely unpleasant ordeal of Sherlock’s whole _life._ But by the time he had formed these thoughts into words that made sense, Sherlock looked up from the floorboards to find that half the day had gone by and it was already dark and John had left the flat hours ago for a date with one of those women he liked. The moment had clearly passed and would never come again; such was the nature of moments, so tragically fleeting.

Sherlock had thought of that poem again as he sat and waited for John to return. _That is not it, at all. That is not what I meant at all. )_

Yes, the dog was a much, much better arrangement. Surprising that Sherlock or Mycroft or one of the many and varied psychotherapists and psychologists and psychoanalysts that had featured in his life hadn’t thought of it before.

Sherlock was just in the middle of thinking how glad he was to have the dog, and how glad he was that it would never choose to leave him, when it did exactly that. Left him. By choice.

Sherlock knew that a normal person would not call being slammed into by a garish yellow taxi a ‘choice’, but the other explanations (the cat on the other side of the street/the smell of the hotdog stand wafting over from the next block/random spurt of overexcitement and energy) were incompatible. Sherlock’s dog would never be so stupid, so impressionable and pathetic and _stupid_ as to suddenly run headlong into oncoming traffic at the sight of a cat or the smell of a hotdog. Not _Sherlock’s_ dog.He was brave and resilient and altogether quite endearing. He was not stupid. The only conclusion to draw was that the dog chose to die abruptly and instantly, for a reason that was incomprehensible to Sherlock.

No. No, this was idiocy, sheer idiocy. It was a _dog,_ a stupid, pea-brained, moronic dog who didn’t _know_ anything or _understand_ anything or _choose_ anything. It just followed its senses wherever they led. Of course dogs did things like race into the road unannounced. Of _course_ Sherlock should have known this. Of course he shouldn’t have loved it. How completely pedestrian of him. How amateur.

But for the first time in his life, rationalising the situation didn’t make the searing pain of it subside. Sherlock thought rational thoughts and told himself facts and tried his absolute hardest to not let the feelings in, the useless, _useless_ feelings, but no matter what he said or thought or chose to make himself believe, there was his dog, lying in the middle of a New York street, bleeding and bleeding, and not moving at all. Yes, there it was.

There it was.

A voice suddenly shouted from somewhere to his right. “Jesus, shit! You hit the dog, you hit the goddamned dog!”

The taxi door opened, closed again, footsteps (slight limp, leg broken as teenager, ruined college football career.) “I’m sorry… I’m so sorry! I just didn’t see the thing, it just darted across me like that, I didn’t even have a chance to think… God, did you never think about buying him a leash? This is New York fucking City, not your backyard! Are you insane?

“Don’t yell at him, you just killed his dog! Sir, sir, are you alright?”

Oh, they were talking to him.

 _Are you alright?_ Sherlock didn’t know. At the moment all he could feel was this heartstopping desire to undo the last 30 seconds of time and prevent them from happening somehow. He couldn’t take his eyes off the dog, _his dog_ , who, after effortlessly surviving all their night-time daredevil pursuits and reckless chasing of gunmen and any number of potentially deadly activities, had been knocked down so easily by a taxi. A _taxi_. Nothing but metal sheets and screws and plastic wiring. It was too easy, too cruel, too much for Sherlock to cope with.

 _Are you alright?_ If someone didn’t physically force him to at some point, Sherlock wasn’t sure he would ever be able to move from this exact spot, standing on the kerb ( _the sidewalk… he was in America, it was a sidewalk)_ and looking at the slowly widening pool of dark red blood. The small indentation on the bumper of the taxi. The crime scene. He would never solve this one, it would haunt him forever. He felt sick. He would never move and he would never blink and he would never breathe. The world could carry on around him, and he would just be still.

 _Are you alright?_ He acknowledged a quiet but powerful part of himself that wished he had been in front of that taxi as well. Or instead, maybe, because the dog really didn’t deserve to die. The dog was good, through and through. No, _Sherlock_ should have been smashed into by the taxi, thrown across the street and landed with his head cracked open on concrete slabs on the pavement outside St Barts. No, that was wrong, that was the other death. The one that John had had to witness.

  _Are you alright?_   Had somebody asked John this too? Sherlock felt sure they would have, human vocabulary post-crisis was pathetically predictable, it essentially wittled down to ‘oh my God’ and ‘are you alright?’.

And had John been alright? Sherlock had thought so, convinced himself so, perhaps, but now… he couldn’t be at all sure. If this was what shock felt like, if this was what grief and loss and pain truly _felt_ like… Sherlock didn’t even understand how John had survived.

_John… if I had known, if I had only known, I would never, I would never, never…_

“Sir, are you alright?”

Insistent, anxious, female. Failed her first aid course in high school. One child, a girl. Six years old.

_Are you alright?_

Yes, but the dog… he loved the dog, and the dog loved him… so how? Why?

_Are you alright?_

A stupid question. Of course he was alright, he had remained on the sidewalk, entirely unharmed while his dog died and died and died. She should be asking the dog, although that would be stupid too because the dog was dead and couldn’t talk and dogs couldn’t talk even when they were alive anyway and Sherlock knew this because he knew the anatomy of their vocal cords but also because had tried and tested it on several occasions, always with the same silent, passive results.

_Are you alright?_

(No.)

 “Oh my God, I think he’s gonna pass out.”

“I’m not going to pass out, I will be perfectly fine.” The sound of Sherlock’s own voice surprised him momentarily, because it really was his own voice, and not the fake American one he had been using for the past year and six months. “I apologise for my dog inconveniencing you. In retrospect, you’re right, I should have bought a lead.”

The taxi driver blinked several times. “Oh. Right. Well… can I… take you somewhere? The vet or… somewhere?”

Sherlock consciously deployed the muscles that would result in the shaking of his head. “No, thank you, I can manage.”

He walked into the road and picked up the small body of the dog which was still warm and wet, and cradled it to his chest with gentle hands as he crossed over onto the other side of the street and sat down on a bench there. The traffic slowly started to continue to flow past again. Life went on, and Sherlock resented it for a moment, before remembering that was pointless. Then he thought about what an absolutely categorical mistake he had made in assuming certain things about human beings such as ‘John will be fine’ without carrying out proper tests and experiments. How appallingly arrogant of him to think that he could brush off pain as if it meant nothing. It meant _everything._ And this… this horrific feeling that Sherlock had been feeling for the past two minutes was what John had been feeling for the past year and seven months. Sherlock felt sick again.

The taxi driver glanced nervously over at this bizarre, tall thin British man sitting on that bench looking pale and frighteningly still with bloodstains all over his shirt and the mangled body of his dog on his lap, and slowly got back into his car with a cold feeling in his chest, and drove away, knowing he would never forget that afternoon for as long as he lived. The anxious woman reacted differently; she crossed the street after Sherlock and sat on the bench next to him.

“What was his name, honey?”

Sherlock didn’t answer for a long moment. He was trying to deduce why she wanted to know, why it was at all important to her, what she was going to be late for due to this messy interruption to her schedule. His mind was whirring, spinning, and producing nothing. He gave up.

“Watson.”

“Watson?” She smiled a soft smile and leaned forward to lightly touch his wrist. “I’ll pray for him.”

Sherlock was speechless again.

 That was just so…

 It was…

 He couldn’t even…

“Thank you”, he found himself whispering, and even more surprisingly, he found himself meaning it. He did not believe in God or prayer or religion, and considered people who did to be monumental idiots, but oh, none of that mattered. Because Sherlock understood, he _understood_ that this was her way of reaching out to him and caring about him and loving him in the kind, totally ineffectual but nevertheless lovely way that nice normal people did. That was the kind of thing that John would have had to tell him before, but now Sherlock understood it all by himself.

She stood up and walked away. And Sherlock understood more things. Like how dogs and skulls did not really replace people, not at all. And how small human things like smiling and touching people’s wrists and saying nice things at the right moment meant something much more significant than Sherlock had previously imagined. And how putting extortionate effort into constructing an elaborate lie in an attempt to protect someone was not an act of love, but an act of fear.

Sherlock feared John would be killed by that sniper. Yes, true. But once he had successfully faked the death and the snipers were called off, what was stopping him then? Sherlock feared that a small part of John would actually believe that he was a fraud. No, false. Sherlock had never any doubt in his mind that John knew him intimately and believed in him absolutely. So then, what? Sherlock feared John would never be able to forgive him for what he had done. Sherlock feared that this time, he had gone too far. Sherlock feared that Baker Street wouldn’t feel quite the same anymore. Or maybe Sherlock feared that it would, and that John would continue to misunderstand him and go on dates with women and take offence at what were intended to be compliments of the deepest nature. Sherlock feared anything changing between them and he feared it staying the same, and so it had been easier to freeze the whole thing in dramatic stasis and jump off a building and move to New York.

But Sherlock was tired of faking the accent, and he hated his new coat, and he didn’t want to be a tall pale freak genius who let something as trivial as _fear_ make his choices for him.

 _John._ _Brave, resilient, reckless, endearing, lovely John with the spectacularly accurate aim and the kind mouth,_ _let me be like you. You would never do this to me, you would never run into a road or throw yourself off a rooftop, you would never give up like that. You would never fear._

John was not a broken body lying small and empty in Sherlock’s cold arms. John was only 3464 miles away (give or take), and his heart was still beating, pumping blood and pain and the possibility of forgiveness around his body, and Sherlock knew exactly what he had to do.

Obvious, to be honest.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Things that are referred to in this chapter that I did not write:
> 
> ‘The Fire’ by Ben Howard:  
> (my go-to song for Reichenbach feels)
> 
> And (obviously)   
> The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock by T.S Eliot 
> 
> Also congratulations/commiserations (whichever is appropriate) to people who got A level results this week! I got mine, 3 A*s lolololllll I managed to pretend I am clever once again hehehe and now Cambridge HAVE to take me hehehehehe.
> 
> Thanks for reading this, by the way. You could be doing so many better things with your time (as could I). But thank you.  
> :)


	4. Going Home

“Hello Mrs Tulbridge, how are you feeling? That’s good, that’s very good. And your stitches are looking in fine form, Nurse Herman did a good job on those… That’s nothing to worry about, perfectly normal. Give us a call if it starts to cause serious pain, but otherwise it will all be fine... Yes, see you soon. See you.”

“Mr Lawrence? … Ah yes, pain in your fingers… Arthritis is a possibility, of course, but it’s unlikely given your age. We’ll run some tests… Oh, I had a flatmate who used to play the violin... I did like it, not so much at 4 o’clock in the morning, but most of the time it was… yes, it was lovely… Well perhaps you shouldn’t practice too much, at least until we know what we’re dealing with… No problem.”

“Well hello, nice to meet you! What’s your name?... Jacob. And is this your mummy, Jacob? … Hi, Dr Watson, we talked on the phone. Now, you’ve got a bad cough, I hear. Let me see what I can do to help... Oh… hmm… I’m afraid this looks like bronchitis. I’ll give you a prescription for some medicine to make it better, how does that sound?... What do you want to be when you grow up Jacob?... Oh really, a detective? … You won’t believe this, but I used to be a sort of detective once too… Yes, yes I did catch bad guys… Scared? Me? Never! Well… sometimes. Take one of these every day, can you remember to do that? … Well, I’ll give them to your mummy, just in case. Goodbye, best of luck with crimesolving, give me a call if you ever need tips!”

“Carol. Yes, hi again... No, I don’t think you do have malaria… Alright, you might have a bit of a temperature, but yellow fever is a highly unlikely diagnosis… Leprosy? Carol… just… no. I think you’re actually in fairly good physical health, as always… Look, if you really want my help, the best I can do is refer you to a psychotherapist to help you deal with what is clearly a case of paranoid hypochondria… No… you won’t catch cancer. You _can’t_ catch cancer, Carol…”

John was seeing patients, filling in for one of the hospital’s resident GPs who was on maternity leave. This was how things went; other doctors would have lives to lead and complications and responsibilities and illnesses and holidays, and John would fill in for them, because he didn’t have those things. Any of them. He was useful. He was happy to help. He was a real asset to the hospital staff. He was a sad, lonely man that nobody paid much attention to.

“Cooee!” Someone poked their head around the door. Someone with an achingly familiar voice that reminded him of biscuits and Baker Street and lavender soap.

John glanced up from his paperwork. “Mrs Hudson…? What are you…”

She beamed at him. He stood up to embrace his old landlady (who was not his housekeeper) and tried not to grimace as she put her hands on either side of his face and gave him that worried look.

“How have you been, dear?”

John remembered to smile. “Oh… y’know. Fine, just fine. And what about you?” He backed away and gestured for her to sit down in the patient’s chair as he brought his own chair around to sit opposite. “You’re not staying in the hospital, are you?”

“Oh no, dear. It’s just a quick visit, for my hip, you know. One of the doctors here is a specialist in hip surgery apparently, but I didn’t think much of him. He had a lovely orchid in the corner of his office that was all dried up and half-wilting, and you know what I always say? Never trust a doctor who can’t even keep his own pot plants alive!”

John forced another smile. “I would say that’s very wise.”

“Anyway, I was just on my way out when I heard someone say there was a patient for Dr Watson, and I thought to myself ‘it couldn’t be _the_ Dr Watson, could it?’, so I thought I’d better check, just in case, and here you are!”

Yes. Here he was.

Mrs Hudson beamed. “It’s lovely to see you again, John dear. I miss having you and Sherlock around terribly.”

Christ. His name, his actual name. John hadn’t heard anyone say Sherlock’s name out loud in such a long time. It should have resulted in nothing more than a vague pang by now, but it didn’t. It was still a stab of a knife and the twist of the blade and the crack of a skull on concrete.

“How’s Baker Street coping without me then?” John asked half-heartedly.

“Oh, dreadfully.” Mrs Hudson shook her head. “Haven’t been able to find suitable tenants for the flat at all. The last couple I had moved out just yesterday, and… well… I can’t say I’m sorry to see them go. The noise they made, Dr Watson! And at all hours of the night and day!”

“They can’t have been worse than us surely?” He said, smiling again. He wondered in the back of his mind if there would ever be a time again where he could smile unconsciously, without deliberate planning and execution. He thought probably not.

“Oh much worse, dear, much worse. Sherlock made a fair amount of noise, true, and he did make an awful mess sometimes in that kitchen… don’t know what he did in there… and if it hadn’t been for you, I know he _never_ would have paid the rent on time… but this couple… well.” She pursed her lips. “Let’s just say their noises were not the sort of noises a woman of my age wants to be hearing from upstairs at three in the afternoon.”

Ah. John understood.

“Honestly, it almost made me miss the gunshots and exploding microwaves! How did he explode that microwave, by the way?”

“I never asked.”

“No, probably best not to. Well anyway, all that noise finally got them somewhere and now they’ve moved out to the countryside to have the baby, so the flat’s empty again and honestly, I don’t think I have the strength to try and find new tenants.”

“I’m sure there are people who help with that sort of thing. Estate agents and whatnot. I’d be happy to help you look into it…”

Mrs Hudson smiled at him. “Oh thank you, dear, but it’s alright. I think it will be nice to just have some peace and quiet for a while. And this way, if you ever want to come back to London, even just for a short while, you’ll have a nice place to stay! I’ll always be happy to have you, I know how Sherlock used to feel about cheap hotel rooms in the city… a breeding ground for bacteria and germ colonies, he said, and I think he’s right!”

221B Baker Street would always be happy to have him, that was nice to know, John supposed. Not that it made any difference; welcomed or not, John would never be going back there. His therapist had ‘strongly suggested’ it, but he wouldn’t. Couldn’t. No sense in it, really. It was just a flat that held some wonderful memories that were too painful to revisit. To return there would be to drive himself insane, really insane, and not just the depressed kind of emptiness that he currently lived. To return there would be masochism. Counter-productive. _Pointless,_ Sherlock would say. _Your psychological health is a pseudo-concept which cannot be tackled by visiting a location from your past. Don’t be so naïve, John, you’re a medical man._

Yes, by God, he was.

Nevertheless, it was kind of Mrs Hudson to offer. Yes, very kind. She was a very kind lady, and she had put up with Sherlock for all that time. She deserved an award of some sort. Or at least a cup of tea.

“That’s very kind of you, I will keep it in mind. Can I offer you a cup of tea?”

“Oh no thank you, dear, I just had one in the waiting room outside. Anyway, I should be off, need to catch my train. I just thought I would drop by on my way past, and check in on you.” She stood up and John went to open the door for her. She looked up at him for a moment. “You know, I worry about you more these days now that you’re settled down in a safe area with a sensible job than I ever did when you were gallivanting around London with criminals and madmen all night. It’s funny, that.”

No, not funny at all. Made absolute, perfect sense. There was no need to worry about John before, even when he had guns held to his head and semtex strapped to his body and paid assassins on his tail, because he had been with Sherlock. He was never in any danger when he had the World’s Only Consulting Detective by his side. But now Sherlock was gone, and the danger was all inside John’s head, and it was closer and more real than ever.

“There’s no need to worry about me, Mrs Hudson. I’m fine. I have a cat.” John said, because it seemed like the right thing to say.

“Ooh, a cat!” Her eyes lit up. “Well, that _is_ a good sign. Look after yourself, Dr Watson, and if you’re ever in London, please stop by. I still have packets and packets of those chocolate biscuits you and Sherlock were always running out of, and somebody needs to eat them, and it certainly isn’t going to be me at my age and with my constitution…”

John waved her off, and went back to sit at his desk. What was that phrase that people used? Oh yes, a ‘blast from the past’. A very accurate description, John felt the past howling in his ears like a hurricane , loud and intrusive and threatening. He had not been ready to see Mrs Hudson and hear Sherlock’s name out loud and think about 221B Baker Street being occupied by other people. He had not quite had the chance to prepare himself for that particular blast. He was blown to pieces. He was crumbling apart.

“Dr Watson? I’ve got your next patient here…” One of the pretty secretaries’ voices came in over John’s intercom.

“Yes, that’s fine, send them in.” John replied.

He steadied his breathing. He carried on.

When the end of his shift came and he began the walk back to the small house in Dalkeith Grove, he tried, he really _tried_ not to think about Sherlock, but there was a woman waiting for a bus outside the hospital in an obnoxious pink suit that looked so very like the one in their first ever case together that he really couldn’t help it. He remembered his jaw hanging open in sheer unashamed amazement as Sherlock knelt over that woman’s body and analysed it flawlessly; _where in England has there been heavy winds and rainfall within the past 2 hours? Cardiff._

Amazing.

Brilliant.

Extraordinary. Quite, quite extraordinary.

Oh, but there were signs even then, weren’t there? Flagposts. Warnings. Not Sally Donovan’s warnings, John didn’t care about those. _He doesn’t have friends._ Correct, he’s only got one. _One day we’ll be standing over a body and Sherlock Holmes will be the one who put it there._ Wrong, he would die before he let that happen. He did die. _He’s a psychopath_. No, he’s a highly functioning sociopath, ( _do your research)_.

No, John meant other signs. Like that pill, that godforsaken pill that Sherlock had been absolutely 100% willing and ready to gamble his life on. In the heat of the moment, standing in that high-ceilinged glassy room watching Sherlock play mind games with a serial killer through two panes of glass, John hadn’t had time to think anything except: _oh shit, he’s going to take that pill, he’s really going to do it, well I can’t let that happen…_ before he shot. But in retrospect, perhaps the kind of person who will knowingly confront a murderer with a roll of the eyes and take the potentially deadly capsule they offer them is the kind of person who does not hold their own life in particularly high regard, and by extension, is just the kind of person who would throw themselves off a building in broad daylight.

And then that time, only a few months later, when they were running through Hyde Park, and John suddenly saw this woman coming at Sherlock with a breadknife and Sherlock had his _goddamn eyes closed_ as if he was daydreaming or sunbathing or taking a bloody _nap_ instead of facing certain imminent death. Again, John hadn’t put much thought into it before sprinting as hard and fast as he could and throwing himself on her to bring her to the ground just in time, but in retrospect, the kind of person who will face death with their eyes calmly closed and a serene look on their face and then _laugh about it_ afterwards is probably the kind of person who won’t put up the fiercest of fights to cling onto life.

And then the first time they had encountered Moriarty, Sherlock had practically _waltzed_ into his trap. He had posted a request for a rendezvous with a man who had been planting bombs all over London on his very own _blog_ . Come out to play. Come and dance. Yes, a person who would do that is clearly someone with a mindset that can only be explained by a deathwish. Sherlock would probably see death as a new kind of experiment, a new experience to put himself through, new data to collect. The next adventure. Welcomed with open arms.

Signs, signs, they had been everywhere, and John had been too starstruck to see them. Of course the kind of person who fires a gun at the walls of their flat when they get bored is the kind of person who would give themselves an overdramatic suicidal finale, just to make sure they went out with a bang. Of course the kind of person who says things like _Excellent! Haven’t had a good serial killer in ages!_ is the kind of person to whom death means nothing, and who would eagerly forgo it themselves without a moment’s thought for those left behind.

Of course. John had been so stupid. He had seen, but not observed. Sherlock would have been disappointed in him. He was disappointed in himself.

He put the key in the lock. He read the newspaper, scanning particularly for crimes that looked interesting or bizarre, a habit he could not train himself out of. He thought about calling the charming woman in the blue coat who had given him her number at the surgery two days ago, but decided against it. Not tonight. Not with Baker Street memories still seeping slowly through his tired brain.

He warmed up some thai chicken and rice for his own dinner, and he gave the cat its dinner too, even though the cat wasn’t around to eat it. Quite possibly never would be. Who knows where it was. Not here.

He watched a programme on television about the reign of King Henry V, and found it unbelievably boring. He remembered he used to love history as a boy. He wondered what had happened to him.

_What’s happened to you?_ Harry had asked him just after the one-year anniversary of The Incident had rolled around. _I know you were close to this bloke, but… Jesus, John, it’s been a whole year. Isn’t it time to try and… I dunno… move on?_

They had been sitting in a Costa in Leeds train station, on their way to visit their aunt for her 80th birthday. John had given his sister a steady look. How could she, with her shabby Primark cardigan and her slightly wonky fringe, ever even attempt to understand someone as remarkable and important as Sherlock Holmes? How could she suggest ‘ _moving on’_ from him, like he was one of John’s petty ex-girlfriends from uni? How _could_ she?

She looked uncomfortable under his gaze, but continued anyway.

_You were close to cousin Matthew too, but you didn’t react like this after his motorbike accident when you were nineteen. And I know it was harder this time because… because you saw it happen… I do understand that, but you were a soldier for fifteen years and a doctor for seven before that. You’ve watched people die like I’ve watched kids get detention._ (Harry was a secondary school Biology teacher.) _I just… I don’t understand what’s happened to you. I want to help, but I don’t understand what I’m helping with. I don’t know what to do._

John had thought about it slowly and carefully as he ate the pesto turkey and mozzarella panini Harry had bought for him. She did want to help him, he knew that. And he knew it was confusing that he wasn’t fitting into the prescribed grieving patterns for a flatmate or friend. He supposed Harry (along with everyone else in the world) had her suspicions about the precise nature of John and Sherlock’s relationship, and to be honest, he wasn’t sure he blamed them anymore. It would make much more sense for John to be quite this affected if he and Sherlock had been something more than friends, it would be much easier to explain and understand and categorize. Unfortunately, explaining and understanding and categorizing things had not been John’s forte when it came to anything to do with Sherlock. He was just as much in the dark as anybody else. Always had been.

Harry cleared her throat awkwardly. _I hope you’re not blaming yourself, John. Mum thinks you might be. But this guy clearly had problems of his own, and none of what happened was your fault, you know that?_ _I’m sure he wouldn’t have wanted you to feel guilty about it._

John almost laughed at that. No, he wasn’t blaming himself. He was nowhere near presumptuous enough to think that he could bear one fraction of the blame for what Sherlock had done. That would mean thinking himself important enough to have an impact on Sherlock’s mind, and John was never going to make that mistake. The very idea of it. He was of no more importance or significance in Sherlock’s life than the mice on the underground, remember? Small and stupid and pathetic and helpless.

_Harry, it’s fine. I’m going to be fine. It’s just taking me a little while to come to terms with it. But I will. Tell Mum not to worry._ John had said, in a tone of voice that indicated that the conversation was over, and Harry seemed more than happy to oblige.

So maybe that was what had happened to him. Maybe that was why he didn’t enjoy history documentaries anymore; he was just ‘coming to terms’ with things.

Or maybe, after tackling massive-scale jewel heists and smuggling rings and a giant ghostly hound and more serial killers than he cared to think about, the minutiae of dates and battles and figures in history had simply lost their lustre. Who had time to think about the past when the present was so infinitely exciting and frantic and alluring? Considering he didn’t know that the earth went around the sun and had never heard of T.S. Eliot, John felt fairly certain Sherlock would not have known Henry V’s battle tactics, or foreign policies, or the effect his reign had on England. It didn’t _matter_ , it wasn’t _useful,_ wasn’t worth keeping in his hard drive. Maybe this attitude had rubbed off on John.

Or maybe he was just tired. He brushed his teeth and went to bed. He slept. He dreamed.

Oh, _dreams._ Afghanistan, a wounded soldier brought to him, he runs to help. But the face… Sherlock’s face. Bloodied and bruised. As usual. Predictable. Someone calling him: _come ON, John._ Sherlock’s voice, that sounds like his voice, but it isn’t because he’s lying here on a stretcher and he’s dead. Someone shot him. No… no he shot himself. No. That’s wrong. _John, we haven’t got time for this, come on! This way!_ John stands up and follows the voice that comes from a man in a long black coat across the desert which turns into a corridor which turns into Scotland Yard and oh, yes hello Lestrade, hello… which turns into Oxford Street in the middle of rush hour. There’s a mouse, a little dead mouse lying on the street, and Sherlock is bending over it. _Oh... this is a good one, this is a great one! John, take a look, what do you see?_ He sees nothing. Just a mouse. _No John, look, REALLY look._ Oh Christ. Um… a brown mouse? Looks fully grown. Been dead no more than a couple of minutes, otherwise the cats would have got at it by now. Cats? Where did they come from? Well, here they are, circling the crime scene, all kinds of cats. Has Sherlock noticed them? _Obviously. Don’t mind them, they’re here to help._ John sees his cat amongst the others, the one he feeds and strokes and tries to take care of. He tries to call it over to him, but he realises it hasn’t got a name. That bothers him for a moment. Sherlock is taking pictures of the mouse; he is excited, or nervous, or irritated, or something. _It’s obvious, John, look at the cloud formation today! The colour of the bus driving past! The moustache of the man who sold you your newspaper this morning!_ John sighs. He didn’t understand, he never had, and he never would. Sherlock looks up, his startlingly blue eyes boring into John’s suddenly. _We’re running out of time._ And John knew he was right about this, yes, they were running out of time, he could hear the clock ticking away in the background. It was Big Ben actually, Big Ben chiming. _Ding dong ding dong, ding dong ding dong._

_Ding dong ding dong, ding dong ding dong._

John opened his eyes with a start. He blinked several times to adjust to the darkness he found himself in, his sheets in their usual twisted, knotted mass. He ran his hands though his hair, and took a deep breath. Dreams were confusing and exhausting.

_Ding dong ding dong, ding dong ding dong._

He frowned, still in a vague haze of half-sleep before he realised that it was the doorbell. The goddamn _doorbell_ that made the sound of Big Ben when someone rang it and that he had meant to replace when he moved in but hadn’t got around to it yet.

So. His doorbell was ringing. Okay. John tried to run through in his mind the possible people who could have reason to ring his door at… yes, 2:51 in the morning. After a moment’s thought, the only explanation he could come up with was that the cat was finding new and more annoying ways to avoid using the bloody expensive catflap that John had installed for it, and had taken to ringing the doorbell instead.

In all honesty, by this point, he wouldn’t even have been surprised.

_Ding dong ding dong, ding dong ding dong._

“Alright,” John hissed to nobody in particular as he staggered to his feet, “I am _coming_.”

No, it couldn’t be the cat because the doorbell had a small plastic flap that needed to be lifted before you could get to the button; a movement which requires opposable thumbs which cats simply do not have. So whoever was ringing his doorbell had opposable thumbs. That was a start. The fact that the bell was being rung several times suggested that whoever was outside knew that John was home. The fact that they were ringing it at 2:51 in the morning meant that… they worked night shifts? They had insomnia? They were an alien who had just landed on earth and who had no grasp of the human concepts of night and day yet?

In the time it took for John to get downstairs from his bedroom to the front hall, Sherlock would have been able to tell him the age, gender, entire family history and visiting purpose of the person at the door. John, however, arrived at the door no more enlightened than before. He opened it, ready for the mystery to just solve itself for a change.

“An _appallingly_ juvenile doorbell, John, even for you.”

John blinked, and then rolled his eyes, understanding at last. Oh. Ha ha. Oh yes, how _clever_ of his subconscious brain to trick him into thinking he had woken up, and then to thrust Sherlock at him once again, just to taunt him. John knew his dreams were cruel, but this was all new levels of sadism. As if he needed reminding that the sight of his old flatmate and best friend standing on his doorstep could only ever exist in his dreams, in the dark corridors of his brain that writhed into action when he fell asleep. As if he needed that.

He shut the door on the dream-Sherlock. It was all he could think to do. His mind was trying to torture him, but he wouldn’t play along. He was going to go back to bed. What else was he supposed to do? Invite him in for tea? _Oh, hello there, my subconscious mind’s projection of Sherlock, do come in! Let’s chat about the decomposition of the human heart and the weather in London at this time of year and why you killed yourself in front of me. Here, let me take your coat, I—_

John’s foot had just hit the first of the stairs on his way back to his bedroom when he realised it. He stopped dead in his tracks, and suddenly felt very cold and shaky and very, very awake. His coat. His _coat._ Every time Sherlock featured in John’s dreams, he was always wearing his coat, the one with the pretentious collar and the hand-stitched dark grey wool. The same coat that had made John’s head spin when he worked out how much it must have cost. The same coat that had blown out behind the falling man like dark angel wings as he dropped from the sky. In John’s mind, Sherlock was always _always_ wearing that coat.

The man on his doorstep had been wearing a dark blue jacket with a zip up the front.

And that made no sense at all. Why would his mind suddenly invent a new coat for Sherlock to wear? After all this time? Where had it come from? What would be the point? Why? Why? _Why?_ He turned around and walked very slowly back to his front door. He took a breath, paused for a moment, and then opened it again.

Sherlock was still there. He was frowning, with his mouth open as though he was about to object strongly to having just had a door slammed in his face, but he stopped when he caught John’s expression.  John just stood there. He narrowed his eyes, he closed them tightly shut, he opened them wide, and tried to blink away what had to be a hallucination. It had to be. Sherlock… Sherlock was dead.

Right. Well, John really hadn’t wanted to do this, it seemed so silly, the sort of thing one sees people do in rubbish slapstick comedy films, but he found himself left with no choice. He put out a hand, leaned forward, and poked the Sherlock apparition in the middle of the chest.

Sherlock took an abrupt step backwards, looking startled, and John returned his hand to his side, looking blank. Right. So it was solid. A human body. Not an apparition, not a hallucination. A person. A _living_ person. And this living person looked absolutely exactly like Sherlock in every way, those cheekbones were unmistakable. And John was definitely awake, there was no doubt about that.  And then there was that thing that Sherlock had said to him once… what was it?... _Once you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be true._

Conclusion? Sherlock was not dead. He was alive, and standing on John’s doorstep.

“Right,” John said, in absence of anything else, and stepped back to allow Sherlock inside. Because really, what else was there to do?

Sherlock recovered himself from the undignified poking and serenely strode into the slightly cramped hallway, looking entirely unruffled.

“Right.” John said again. He ran his hands through his hair. Sherlock looked at him expectantly. “Umm… through there…”

 He pointed to the living room through a door to the left. Sherlock ducked his head under the doorframe and stepped inside.

Oh, yes, that was something John had noticed when he rented the house. Low ceilings. Perfectly fine for a short man like himself, but entirely unsuitable for a Sherlock-sized person. But then again, to be fair to himself, he had not exactly been expecting a Sherlock-sized person to ever enter the house, and so low ceilings were a reasonable sacrifice to make for the sake of a cheap rate. But now here Sherlock was, in the house, having to duck under the doorframe, and John felt inexplicably ashamed of himself.

He breathed out slowly, and realised that he probably ought to follow Sherlock in there and… well, talk to him. Yes. Somehow they would have to have this conversation. Christ. Alright. He entered the room. Sherlock was sitting on the sofa with his knees together and his elegant hands folded neatly on his lap, looking slightly uncomfortable for the first time since John had met him. This was not Baker Street, where he could squat or sleep or sulk on the sofa all he liked, and shoot guns at the walls, and systematically destroy the kitchen appliances. This was somebody else’s house, somebody else’s whole world, and he was a guest and a stranger and he had to be respectful. (Normally he wouldn’t have cared in the slightest, but this was John, and so he did.)

A beat of silence as John stared at Sherlock and Sherlock’s piercing eyes flicked around the room, taking everything in. Then he spoke.

“Well, John, this is lovely. I like what you’ve done with the place.”

John couldn’t help it; he let out a hoarse mechanical laugh.

Sherlock instantly prickled, his front of calculated politeness shattering. “What? Why are you laughing?”

John shook his head. “Sorry. It’s just… it sounds like you rehearsed that. That… that line.”

“I wanted to get it right. Didn’t I get it right? That’s what people say, isn’t it?” Sherlock demanded.

“Yes… yes, I suppose it is,” he sighed, sinking into an armchair opposite Sherlock.

“Don’t know why people _do_ say it, it’s so rarely true. In here, for instance, this rug that your sister gave you, probably for Christmas, would look much better in the hallway, the colours are all wrong for the walls in here. You’ve also moved the table from the other side of the room; a mistake, it looked much better by the window, the room looks poky now. And that painting is hung completely skew, how can you _stand_ it? Also, the light fittings are—“

“Sherlock.”

“—much too close to the –“

“ _Sherlock_.”

Sherlock stopped talking. That was John’s warning tone of voice, and it usually meant that Sherlock was doing something wrong. Sherlock knew he was doing it all wrong, but he couldn’t for the life of him work out how to do it right. This sort of thing… these delicate social situations… they were not really his area. “Yes?”

John had his head in his heads, his voice muffled as he clenched his fists in his hair. “Just… give me a minute, ok?”

“A minute?” Sherlock queried, preparing to count down from 60 seconds in his mental stopwatch.

“A _metaphorical_ minute.” John clarified.

Oh. That was an entirely different thing, Sherlock knew. Metaphorical minutes could last anywhere from ten seconds to half an hour; and were almost impossible to measure and predict. Sherlock had always found metaphors to be a most perplexing linguistic construct. They were so illogical, so entirely unnecessary and misleading. Why say one thing when you really mean something different? Why not just be precise and accurate? John’s blog posts had always been full of metaphors and puns and analogies and other things Sherlock didn’t understand. It was maddening.

 This particular minute lasted four minutes and twenty two seconds, and then John Watson sat up straight again, placing his hands on the armrests of his chair to steady himself. “Right.”

Sherlock tried not to grin, he knew that would be inappropriate and not good at a moment like this. But John just looked so very like he used to do; exasperated and defeated and mystified, but still chock-full of grim determination and boundless patience, that it was hard not to smile at the sheer John-ness of him. He was glad that none of the John-ness had disappeared in his absence. He was rather fond of it.

“Well, you’ve obviously got questions.” Sherlock stated after a moment.

John raised his eyebrows. “Yeah, one or two.”

“Please feel free to ask them, I have plenty of time.”

“Oh, really? No appointments to keep?” The familiar tone of sarcasm began to creep into John’s voice, and Sherlock resisted another smile. “No cases on the go? Right, because you’re _dead_. Dead men don’t have appointments.”

“I’m not dead.” Sherlock decided that clarifying that point was as good a place to start from as any.

“No, I can see that. You’re alive. Definitely… alive.” John nodded. “Jesus.”

“Jesus was resurrected actually, meaning he died and then came back from the dead. I was never dead in the first place. Although the resurrection story is nothing more than a ridiculous, unverifiable myth anyway. What I did was far more exciting and clever.”

“Really.” John said in a flat voice. “And, um, what exactly _did_ you do?”

“Oh, tedious to explain. Involved an optical illusion of perspective altering, a laundry truck, a friendly morgue assistant… etcetera etcetera.”

“A morgue assistant…” John’s mind was struggling and struggling to keep up with all of this. “You mean… Molly Hooper? Molly helped you fake your death?”

“Well, _obviously_ , John. Official autopsy reports and death certificates don’t just appear out of thin air.”

John closed his eyes slowly. “So _Molly_ knew you were alive the whole time. She knew, and she didn’t tell me.”

“She couldn’t tell you, she was sworn to secrecy under the Official Secrets Act. Very convenient piece of legislation, that. Gets all sorts of people to keep their mouths shut about all sorts of things.”

“Official Secrets Act…” John repeated quietly. “So… Mycroft. Mycroft knew too.”

Sherlock’s face flickered with annoyance for a moment. “Yes, unfortunately it was imperative to involve my brother in the proceedings. I couldn’t have kept his fat nose out of it even if I had wanted to, and besides, he proved to be useful in various ways… press releases and new identities and travel documents and suchlike. Usually a nightmare to procure, but Mycroft manages it all with just a phonecall. Much more efficient.”

“Travel documents?”

“Yes, travel documents. Passports, proof of nationality, security checks, all of that.” Sherlock rattled off in a careless breath.

“Yes… I know… I just… I mean, where did you travel?”

“The United States. New York.”

“New… New York.” John looked up at the ceiling for a moment, willing himself to keep calm and try to understand what in the world was happening. There must be logic and reason behind what Sherlock was saying… there _always_ was. “I thought that you were lying in a patch of dirt in a graveyard, while all this time you were in… you were in _New York._ ”

“Don’t sound so appalled John. Some of it was horrible; the taxis were the wrong colour, and everybody felt the need to engage you in _conversation_ all the time for some incomprehensible reason, and their tea was either nonexistent or awful, but it was the next best thing to London that I could find at a moment’s notice. It sufficed.”

“It did? Oh, I’m so glad.” John muttered.

Sherlock’s eyes flashed. “Well, it was certainly more exciting than _Edgware._ When Mycroft told me you had moved here, I was shocked and honestly a little disappointed.” He glanced around the living room with a raised eyebrow, making clear his thoughts on John’s new abode. “Really John, the suburbs are beneath you.”

John ignored this open display of snobbery and general rudeness.“So Mycroft knows my address. And he was keeping you up to date on… on my whereabouts. And stuff.”

“Naturally.”

John gave a single nod. “Right.”

“I was sorry to hear about your engagement going downhill.”

“No you weren’t.”

Sherlock conceded this point with a swift smile. “Well, I was sorry that you were sorry.”

This, John could sort of believe. “Didn’t think to send a condolences card or anything, though? _Sorry your fiancée broke up with you, hope you’re doing alright, oh and by the way, I’m not dead._ Something along those lines, maybe?”

The eyebrow raised again. “Condolences cards. £3 for a standard issue message that means absolutely nothing? Dull.”

“No… no not dull, Sherlock, _nice_. A nice, human thing to do. Anyway, you’re slightly missing the point here—“

“No I’m not.” Sherlock waved a lazy hand around. “You want to know why, in the one year, seven months and five days it’s been since my spectacular fall from the roof at St Bart’s, I never saw fit to tell you that I was not, in fact, dead.”

John nodded slowly. “Yeah that’s… that’s definitely a question I had in mind. Seems reasonable, doesn’t it? I was under the impression that we were supposed to be fr—colleagues.”

“Friends. You can say friends, John, we _are_ friends.”

“Oh we are, are we? We’re _friends?_ ” John could feel the cold shock melting and bubbling up into scalding fury. Funny… he had been so solidly refusing to go through the normal grief processes for the past year and a half, and now it seemed he was going through them all at once. “If we’re such good _friends,_ Sherlock, then why the FUCK did you force me to watch you throw yourself off a building? Why wasn’t I let in on the secret, the big fucking plan, the clever little _performance_ , huh? Cause that, Sherlock, THAT is what friends do. They tell each other things. They don’t lie to each other, they don’t fake being DEAD for nineteen months, they don’t just fucking _abandon_ each other like that. That is NOT what FRIENDS do!”He finished with a roar of anger, and aimed a kick at the cast iron fireplace which definitely caused more damage to his own foot than anything else.

Sherlock sat in mildly surprised silence for a moment, watching this new, furious version of John which had never really surfaced before _. Fascinating._ His breathing patterns were so different when he was angry. And his mouth set itself in a tense, thin line while his fists clenched at his sides, and he looked every inch of a seething, enraged, potentially deadly Andrex puppy. And then, within around 3 seconds, his rage would subside and fizzle into embarrassment and mumbled apologies. _And 3…2…1…_

“Sorry. I’m… I’m sorry. I just… you have no idea what it’s been like for me.” The fight went out of John’s whole body as he slumped in the chair again. “You have no idea.”

Sherlock could not argue with that. “I know. I’m sorry. I am very, very sorry.”

John wasn’t even able to enjoy the sound of Sherlock actually apologising for something for the first time in his life. He couldn’t bring himself to relish it and commit it to memory. It sounded too sad, too quiet and too sad. It should have been monumental, but it wasn’t; it was pathetic.

“ _Why_?” He asked again, desperate and helpless. A mouse running around the tube tracks. A man frozen on the pavement staring up at his only friend standing on the edge of a rooftop six stories above him, and reaching out a hand to him, as if that will change anything. “Please, just… you have to tell me why.”

Ah. This might have been where Sherlock’s bottomless capacity for knowing the answer to every question dried up. How inconvenient.

“I thought it would be…” Sherlock paused for a moment, uncomfortable, searching awkwardly for the words that usually couldn’t come out fast enough. These were important words, he could tell, and it was crucial that he got them right. But, God, it was _difficult._

John looked up, waiting to hear the longed-for explanation of Sherlock’s actions. Something genius, something really special, something worth all of this pain he had inflicted.

“… better.”

Because he could see that Sherlock was trying his absolute hardest to pretend to be a normal human being, John kept his temper in check. This… this was just Sherlock being Sherlock. He didn’t _actually_ think that what he had done was _better_ than all possible alternatives because that was moronic and Sherlock Holmes was many things but he was not moronic. This wasn’t going to be the whole explanation, there would be more. The brilliant revelation would come, and John would silently chide himself for ever having questioned the World’s Only Consulting Detective.

John waited expectantly, but Sherlock said no more; just tented his impossibly slender fingers together under his chin and looked at John. John knew that look. It was the ‘I expect you to understand me even though I’ve said nothing vaguely understandable’ look. John hated that look.

“Umm…” he began, “ok, what exactly do you mean by ‘better’? You might need to be a little more specific here, Sherlock. In case you haven’t forgotten, I’m an idiot.”

“No, you’re not.”

He blinked. “I am, you said so yourself.”

“You’re _not._ ” Sherlock insisted, his eyes narrowing. “I was wrong.”

John feigned a double take. “Jesus Christ, first an apology, and now an admission of fault… we’ll have proclamations of undying love next! Right then, let’s have it. Why am I not an idiot? What’s changed your opinion of me? And for God’s sake, what does ‘better’ mean?”

Sherlock shook his head. “I can’t tell you. It won’t work, you won’t understand. I don’t want you to misunderstand, it will ruin everything all over again.”

John opened his mouth, probably to say something along the lines of ‘try me’, but Sherlock shook his head more vehemently.

“No, look, I thought it would be better, but it doesn’t matter what I thought, because I was wrong. I was very wrong, I miscalculated entirely, and it wasn’t better at all, it was horrible, and I’m sorry.”

John’s mouth was hanging open by this point, and Sherlock was bordering on frantic. He had already been fidgeting on the edge of the chair for a while, but now he was standing up, pacing with long strides across the awkwardly small room and taking up all the space in John’s house and John’s head at the same time.

“I can’t explain it, John, it doesn’t just fit into a category of facts and data like it used to. I don’t know why, I don’t understand. I know I had excellent reasons when I did it, but I can’t remember them now and even if I could, it’s unlikely they would feel so strong anymore, in light of recent events. I just didn’t know what it would be _like_ , how could I have known? I had no previous experience in the matter. Still, it was stupid to disregard the impact just because I hadn’t experienced it myself, it’s not as if there wasn’t plenty of objective evidence pointing to its significance…”

“Sherlock.” John stood up himself, and stepped in front of his friend, stopping him in his tracks. Because it wasn’t out of the question that Sherlock was so tangled in his own thoughts by this point that he wouldn’t even notice John in front of him and just plough straight through him, he also grabbed both his forearms for good measure. This got his attention, Sherlock stopped mid sentence and looked startled.

“Stop.” John said again, using his calm-but-firm doctor’s voice and holding Sherlock’s gaze steadily. “I have absolutely no idea what you’re talking about—“

“I know, you see? I knew it! You can’t possibly—“

“And it doesn’t matter.” John finished. “I hardly ever do, do I? You’re beyond comprehension. Same as always. But I believe you, alright? I trust you, you crazy bastard, and I believe you when you say you thought that what would did would be better. It seems like the kind of thing your brain would come up with, to be honest.”

Sherlock nodded wordlessly. Let John do the talking. Let John cut through the extraneous noise to the heart of the matter. Let John make it all better, with his iron grip on Sherlock’s arms.

“One day you’re going to tell me how you did it, and what in the name of God you were thinking, and I’ll try to understand. But we don’t have to do that now. I don’t think you’re in a fit state to tell me and God knows I don’t think I’m in a fit state to hear it. All that matters to me right now is that… Christ, this is getting a bit rom-com-ish, isn’t it? I feel like I should be standing outside your door on Christmas Eve holding up placards with pictures of mummified corpses on them.”

Sherlock tensed under John’s hands. “…what?”

John laughed to himself and shook his head. “Never mind. That’s a scene from Love Actually. It’s a film.”

“Ah.”

“You’d hate it. No, what I was saying is… it’s okay. It’s all okay. I don’t understand why you left or what made you come back, and I know it all feels like a bit of a mess right now, but I’m just… I’m just really, really glad you’re here because half an hour ago, I was still trying to let you go. I was worried that I was never going to be able to, so I’m glad I don’t have to. I’m glad you’re alive, and that you’re here.”

“So am I.” Sherlock said. Slowly, hesitantly, but he said it all the same.

And John smiled. “That much I can understand. And that’s all that’s really important. To me, at least. Right now.”

Sherlock moved his hands up to grip John’s arms, so they were locked together even more strongly than when there had been police-issued handcuffs connecting them.

Two years ago, the only questions Sherlock had asked John before inviting him to be his flatmate were if he minded the violin and if Sherlock’s tendency to go for days without talking would bother him. Sherlock believed that the important things to know about a future flatmate was their financial means, their family relationships and their military career, but John knew better. He had always known better. Patience and kindness and loyalty and forgiveness and the way people _feel_ were things that John had always held in high regard, and rightly so. Sherlock hadn’t known that it would be important to be able to walk into 221B Baker Street and have somebody hand him a cup of tea and ask him how he was. He hadn’t known things like loss and grief and pain would matter. He hadn’t known that one day it would be necessary to walk into somebody’s house and apologise for having nearly destroyed their life with one extraordinary elaborate lie, and he hadn’t known how wonderful it would feel to be forgiven, and to be told that somebody was glad he was there. He hadn’t known how bloody important all of that was. He had no idea.

“That’s why.” He said out loud, suddenly.

“Why what?”

“Why you’re not an idiot.” Sherlock gave John one of those fleeting smiles that left a mark on your brain like a sparkler trail in the darkness. John basked in it for a moment, storing this image carefully in his mind, before he finally let go of his friend’s arms and took a step back into reality.

“So. Cup of tea?”

Sherlock nodded gratefully.

“I’ll see what I have in the way of food as well. You look like a bloody concentration camp victim, Sherlock, I don’t even want to know the last time you had a proper meal. Didn’t you find anybody to look after you in the Big Apple?”

“The Big Apple?” Sherlock queried, following John into the kitchen. Not wanting to leave his side. Not wanting him to ever be out of sight again.

“It’s a nickname for New York.”

“Oh. Stupid. Why an apple? New York isn’t remotely like an apple. The apples there aren’t even very good.” Sherlock pushed himself up onto the counter, sitting with his legs folded as he watched John making tea. “Big Apple. Do people really call it that, the Big Apple?”

“I think it’s sort of a… historical… cultural… thing.” John tried to explain, resulting in a derisive scoff from Sherlock.

“Oh, _culture_ , I see. No, nobody looked after me, not that I need looking after, I’m not a child, I manage just fine. I looked after myself.”

John said nothing, but raised an eyebrow as he stirred in the milk to the two mugs.

“I also had a dog which I looked after all by myself.” He added, “And neither of us died of starvation on my watch so I must have done something right.”

“Wait, wait a minute. You had a dog? _You_?!” John asked, passing Sherlock his tea.

“Yes, me. Problem?”

“Uhh mate, I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but you’re not the most selfless, caring and animal-friendly of people. In fact, if PETA saw some of the things that went on in our kitchen at Baker Street, they would probably have you arrested.”

Sherlock shrugged. “Well I changed my ways.”

 “No, I don’t believe it. You with a dog? Where is it now then?”

“Dead.”

John blinked. “Oh.”

“Yes, it was run over by a taxi. The blood won’t come out of my shirt. Quite unpleasant. Don’t bother telling me you’re _sorry_ or asking if I’m alright, I’ve been through all of that already. One woman even offered to pray for my dear canine companion’s departed soul, and I doubt you can do better than that, John.”

Sherlock’s voice was prickling with anger and sadness and annoyance, but John said nothing. He just nodded, and looked at Sherlock with all the kindness and empathy and goodness that it is possible to fit into one human. Sherlock drank his tea and felt very warm all over.

“Oh, I’m supposed to be making you food!” John remembered. “No, no arguments. I’m not offering it to you, I’m forcing it upon you. Now I haven’t been to the shops in a while, but there’s… oh there’s eggs, I could do an omelette. Or fish fingers, there’s some of those in the freezer, and of course there’s always baked beans. Beans on toast?”

“That sounds fine.”

“Which bit?”

“Any of it.”

John made all of it.

They sat together in silence for a while, in John’s too-small kitchen which felt odd because there were no blood stains on the counter and nothing growing in a petri dish in the breadbin, but also felt perfectly right because the silence was the perfect, natural kind that only exists between those who are more at peace together than they are apart. _At last_ , the words kept floating involuntarily through John’s tired mind. _At last._ This was what he had been waiting for all that time; not closure or acceptance or understanding, but a miracle. He had said as much out loud to the gravestone, when nobody had been listening; ‘one more miracle Sherlock, just for me. Don’t be dead.’, and he had never really given up the faith that it would happen. If anyone could perform a miracle, it would be Sherlock.

Of course he hadn’t been dead. Who had really believed that? Fools, all of them. John had almost been taken in, but there was a small, fierce part of his heart and head that had always, always known better. But the rest of them, Lestrade, Mrs Hudson, Harry… they actually thought that Sherlock had been beaten. That he had surrendered. John realised that nobody else would ever have the faith in Sherlock Holmes that he did; that everyone else would always fall short. John pitied them. John laughed at them.

“What?” Sherlock demanded as John’s sudden laughter broke the silence.

“You didn’t die.” John chuckled into his mug of tea. “Of course you didn’t die.”

Sherlock raised a questioning eyebrow.

John laughed harder. “Of _course._ And just after the funeral, when I kept thinking I was seeing you everywhere I went… I _was_ seeing you everywhere I went. It was not wishful thinking or grief-induced hallucinations, it was you. I was right.”

Sherlock let a tentative smile play across his lips. He didn’t really understand where John’s mind was going, but he seemed pleased, and that pleased Sherlock in return.

“And the emptiness where the sadness should have been, that was because I _knew_ that there was nothing to be sad about, it wasn’t because I was numb or emotionally deficient in some way. I knew all along, in my bones- no, my bone _marrow_. My arteries and capillaries. I knew, Sherlock.”

 “I know. Very clever of you, I must say.”

John’s face split with a smile of pure contentment because Sherlock really meant that, and wasn’t saying it to appease or to coerce. He had gained genuine approval and had risen in the estimation of Sherlock Holmes, and that was a triumph not to be taken lightly.

“So what now? What happens to us?”

Sherlock put on his mock-contemplative face. “Ooh, I don’t know John. How about we stay in this depressing, soul-sucking suburb whilst you continue to slave away at your unrewarding and frankly distasteful job which you despise, whilst I stay at home and watch Antiques Roadshow and do some dusting and buy the milk and make the beds and have a nice hot dinner ready for you when you come home? How does that sound?”

John grimaced in response. “So it’s back to Baker Street, then?”

“Oh, I think _so_.” Sherlock said with vigour. “As soon as possible. London is the _only_ place to be.”

“Right.”

_I will have to phone Mrs Hudson,_ John thought. _And cancel that dentist’s appointment I had booked for next week. I’ll have to call a moving van first thing tomorrow, and hand in my notice at the hospital, and put some money on my Oyster card. I’ll have to buy a cat carrier from somewhere. It’s good to be going home._

_I wonder where that coat got to,_ Sherlock thought, _Molly, probably. She wanted a little keepsake… yes—probably stashed away in her own cupboard hanging next to that awful ridiculous dress she wore at Christmas. Must get it back from her first thing. Very important. Can’t tackle London without it. Good to be going home._

A small click-and-swish noise interrupted the two men’s thoughts, and both turned to see a sliver of dark grey fur slip through the catflap next to the back door, and land on the mat with a soft sound. The cat surveyed the scene that presented itself for a long moment with cool disdain, then turned its back and began to eat its food.

“What is that?” Sherlock asked after a moment.

“A cat.”

“Yes but why is it here?”

“It’s mine. At least, I think it’s mine; it used to be Mary’s but she left and it stuck around, so I suppose I inherited it.”

“Well disinherit it. It’s not coming with us.”

“Oh, yes it is.”

“John—“ Sherlock began to argue, but John raised a silencing finger, and Sherlock found himself obeying instantly.

“No. This cat has been a hell of a lot more use to me in the past year and a half than you have, or anyone else has for that matter. It took care of me, in its way, and I’m going to return the favour. I’m not abandoning it. No. No more abandoning. No more leaving behind. Those are the conditions.”

“Can’t possibly keep a cat in London.” Sherlock muttered.

“Think you’ll find you can.”

“Well who will look after it when we’re working?”

“It looks after itself.”

“My experiments…”

“You’ll just have to find a safer and more hygienic place to carry them out, won’t you? That will please Mrs Hudson too. And me, come to mention it.”

Sherlock scowled furiously, glaring at the cat, whose back was turned on the whole world. How dare it force Sherlock to make compromises and sacrifices in his life? How dare it take precedence in John’s affections? How dare it even come close to replacing Sherlock in John’s life during his brief period of absence?

Well, Sherlock reminded himself, this was his own fault. He was to blame. He had very nearly torn apart all the good things he had found, and had very nearly destroyed his extremely un-tedious and un-irritating life with John, and had very nearly sabotaged what was quite clearly a perfect example of what people call ‘happiness’ with what he had done. He didn’t know as much about happiness as he did about the chemical breakdown of copper, but he knew that if you were lucky enough to find it, you were supposed to savour it. Not carelessly throw it off a rooftop into the wind. Not do what he had done.

But John only had to say the word, and Sherlock could get it all back. He had so much power, this wonderful ex-army-doctor, and he didn’t even know. Sherlock would do anything to keep him. Whatever the conditions were, he would meet them. He would agree to the stupid goddamn cat, he would move his experiments, he would try to eat more and sleep more, and use less nicotine patches. He would take better care of himself, and John, and everyone else. He would do it all.

Still, he couldn’t say all of that out loud. That would be telling. That would be exposing, and would make him vulnerable, and was much, much more frightening than throwing himself off a building. One day, he would say it. One day when they had just solved a particularly gritty case, and John was feeling exhausted and horrified and world-weary, and had sunk into his chair next to the fireplace, Sherlock would kneel in front of him and look him right in the eye and say ‘I would do anything for you, anything at all, do you know that? If I had to choose between crime scenes and chemicals and you, I would choose you.”, and John would understand that this meant ‘I love you’, and Sherlock didn’t know what would happen next, but John would know the right thing to do, and it would all be fine. Better than fine; it would be good. Very good.

“It’s coming with us.” John repeated, with a tone of finality.

 “But I hate it” said Sherlock, looking at the cat.

“So do I,” said John, looking at Sherlock. “You learn to live with it. Trust me.”

A pause. A breath.

“Alright.”

And it was alright, it was all alright, and one year and eleven months after Sherlock Holmes died, you could find him living at 221B Baker Street with Dr John Watson and an antisocial grey cat; giggling and bickering and keeping London on its toes. Doing what they had always done and what, for the sake of love, London and the angels, we must hope they will always continue to do.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for reading if you made it this far!  
> Hope you enjoyed it.  
> Thanks for indulging me :)  
> xx


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